Ask The Hosts – Episode 31

I shouldn't have laughed that hard at it. Ask the Hosts, episode 31. I'm Joe. I'm Andy. I'm Kevin. Hello, chaps. It's almost a Linux DevTime special. The idea of this show is very simple. You send any questions to show at askthehost.com and we answer them. The catch is that can be about anything except Linux and open source. Before we get going, a quick thank you to people who support us with PayPal and Patreon. We really do appreciate that.

and patrons get these episodes two weeks before everyone else. The first question then. Matt asks, roughly how many jobs, companies, have you had in your career, and what is one that would surprise us? I did a quick count, and I reckon it's... Only eight. And six of them are as a programmer and two basically with paper rounds. Okay. That's hilarious because I also, I think it's eight is my count as well.

Uh, now I guess we were probably like similar in age, but that is funny. That's the same number. The one that would probably surprise people. I have, I have two that might, because most of them are like programming or programming adjacent. However, I was a gymnastics coach for a little while. That is surprising. Yeah, that one is not one that people mostly expect. I had a lot of fun with that. I really enjoyed that.

I was also a like Photoshop photography editor in a photography studio for a little bit. So that's like tech. At least it's not programming adjacent. That one I also had a lot of fun with, except you can only like replace the closed eyes on children with like open eyes or remove wrinkles from clothing for so long before you're just like, I can't do this anymore. So you're good at Photoshop then? I did not know this.

I was at one point in time in my life. I don't know that I would qualify myself as good at Photoshop nowadays. Careful, you don't want to be given a volunteer job now. That's what you can never say that you're good at something because then you're the expert something and you do it always. Yep. I have had two jobs, I think. What? I've had several careers and I've had a lot of freelancing gigs. Okay, okay. But I've almost always officially been my own boss.

I've done long-term contracts for people, but yeah, only two proper jobs. And I suppose I must have talked about this, but if you've not heard this before, it might be surprising to learn that when I was 16, I worked in a nightclub. Oh yeah. Behind the bar when I was very much not allowed to be. I realized I missed out the bit where I was self-employed.

I was trying to start a business making websites for, I lived in Stratford-upon-Avon, which is a tourist place. I decided I was going to make websites for all the bed and breakfast places around Stratford. So I spent a year doing it. And I phoned up every single bed and breakfast place in the town, and I got zero work from that. I got a couple of bits of work making websites here and there, but essentially...

utterly, utterly failed. And it wasn't really the career for me. That sounds a little bit like the time I printed out, I don't know, it must have been 500 or 1,000 flyers for... I will teach you how to use a computer. And went around an area where I knew there was a lot of older people and not a single phone call or email. I spent all day long. It was quite enlightening, actually.

to learn what it is to be someone who goes around flyering or sending junk mail, essentially. It's a lot harder than you'd think it would be. You think, oh, I'll just walk around a bit, but it's relentless. trying to hit every single house in an area. You've got to try and be meticulous about it. And it must have taken me eight hours probably to do, you know, somewhere in the region of a thousand, let's say.

Just to then, you know, sit by the phone waiting for a couple of weeks and just nothing. Well, I'm not someone who likes phoning people at the best of times. Cold calling every single bed and breakfast place in the whole town and every single person not wanting to talk to you was not the most pleasant experience. And being absolutely terrible at it made it just far more awkward than it was going to be anyway.

Did that inform like the direction you took for later parts of your career? Because I would imagine like exactly what you're saying, cold calling people. I like I'm getting sweats just thinking about it. It was awful. And yes, it very much informed. Like I definitely. I thought I didn't want a boss and so I did a PhD and I didn't have a boss.

for what was supposed to be three years and actually took me four years. And by the end of that, I was absolutely ready to have a boss. So by that point, I knew I didn't want to work in any way in anything close to selling things. And I wanted to have a boss who gave me a thing to do like in a week's time. I never had to plan four years in advance again. And that has very much influenced my career. At this point, I think we should mention the somewhat surprising...

Fact that your PhD is in artificial intelligence, given how anti-gen AI you are. It's in computer science and artificial intelligence. And I was doing evolutionary and adaptive systems. So I was trying to make computer systems that worked like... evolved systems well before any of this was quite as fashionable as it is now. The next surprising thing is, why have you not gone to work for Meta for $5 million a year?

You've got a PhD in AI, they would give you five million a year, almost certainly. Is it worth it? Yes, yes it is. It's a lot of money. I don't think it's worth it. I'm having a great time. Just imagine how many Lego sets you could buy with that money, Andy. I have a wonderful life. I wouldn't want anything different. You're such a modest person, Andy. Yeah, that's right. It's one of my best characteristics. Teg asks, what is your winter holidays decoration routine?

or your plans for this winter. Do you go crazy big compared to your neighbors? I think the interesting answer for me is, do I go crazy big compared to my wife? In which case the answer is no. I would sit on the couch and do nothing. Yet somehow my house always ends up looking like it's part of the North Pole around the holidays. My wife loves to decorate. She loves doing things outside.

I usually get pulled into it, especially for the parts that are too high or a little too scary to do. But yeah, for me, I like the holidays. I like the decorations. I like driving around my neighborhood and seeing them. I just... I always feel busy. I don't know. I know it's a terrible answer, but that's me. If it were up to me, I would probably just sit in an apartment and enjoy everybody else's decorations. I love their decorations. For me, it's hard.

I absolutely love Christmas and I love having the house decorated, but I'm kind of useless. So it's quite lucky that I'm married to someone who is extremely effective and is also quite excited about Christmas. I think it's in a way similar, but I would be really, really sad if I sat there without decorations. So I'm lucky that I'm not in that position. But yeah, our house gets covered in a lot of quite cosy, homemade stuff. We don't like...

put a load of stuff outside the house. We'll make sure that you can see the Christmas tree lit up through the window when it's inside, but you can see it from the outside. But yeah, lots of homemade stuff and nice and cozy. Yeah, I'm useless at anything like this. I don't care either way. I enjoy Christmas, but it's not a huge deal to me. So I would just do nothing because I'm too lazy. But my wife does a bit of decorating, but it's pretty minimal.

And she refuses tinsel. If I was going to do it, I'd go full on with the tinsel. But she's just like, no, that's tacky. And with her being German, they have these straw stars, which is a bit strange to me, that she hangs around various... things and we had an outside christmas tree that was just kind of growing in a pot and so we would decorate that and that was nice actually i'd come home and it had all the lights on it and everything

But I think actually relative to our neighbors, we were the big flashy ones by just having an outside Christmas tree. But I don't know what we're going to do this year yet. But I'll tell you this much, right? I'm not going to out this person. I'm not going to name them, but there is a member of the Late Night Linux family who, when we all got on the call to record recently on the 2nd of November, had a Christmas tree in the background. No.

And this person said, as soon as Halloween was over, that was it, Christmas. And we all laughed at this person. No, it all goes up on the 1st of December, no matter what else is happening. Around whatever plans we've got, everything stops so that it all goes up. The house is transformed on that day. Hard agree.

The part that I find funny, too, is as we'll look at different neighbors' houses, I've seen neighbors that have the lights that will pulse with music and are all automated. And my wife or friends will be like, hey, you're into computers and programming. I'm like, you could do this, too, right? And I'm like...

Yeah, that sounds like it would be right up my alley, but it's just not. I don't know if it's just like it would take too much of a learning curve, but I find it interesting. I like to look at it. But that is one that I think is beyond me at this point. So the other tradition that I've got into is every year I make a game and I share it with my friends and family in lieu of a Christmas card, basically. At some point we decided we were going to stop sending physical cards because it's wasteful.

and we were going to do this instead. So now it's a total burden. I've been working on this year's game since the 1st of January this year, and I'm quite stressed about getting it done. But it's also great fun. What you need to do is just...

skin one of your snake games to be like green and red and white and stuff and just call that good and like eating the presents instead of the apples there you go yeah last year we had really ambitious plans that totally fell through and so in the last two weeks I just cobbled together a game, like sports game that actually came out quite, really quite well, but it was just utterly thrown together with no planning. Software Wolf asks, pineapple on pizza?

And my answer is, meh, take it or leave it. I do not understand why the internet likes to argue about this. Pineapple is fine on a pizza. It's like... Not my favorite. I'm not going to necessarily pick it, but if it's on there, I'm not going to freak out about it. Okay, a bit of pineapple, fair enough.

I totally agree. I don't know why the internet's been aflame with this type of debate, because pineapple on a pizza, like, if it's there, I'll eat it. I'm like, oh, like a little splash of freshness. And it doesn't bother me at all. Now, if I order a pizza, I've never once ordered it with pineapple on it. But if it's there, it doesn't bother me. It's completely wrong. It's morally wrong. You shouldn't...

put sweet things with savory things. You shouldn't put savory things with sweet things. That's my final answer. Okay, so you're not going to have jam on a piece of toast then? That's the sweet things. Bread is neutral. It's not savory. The bread in the pizza is neutral too.

Yeah, but it's this other stuff on pizza that's savory, like cheese. What about, I don't know, sweet and sour chicken? Yeah, that's wrong. You shouldn't have that. Again, I'm not a massive fan of it, but I'm not going to like, I'm not eating it. What about coronation chicken with raisins in?

No, that's just because raisins are gross. Yeah. And that is because I am a literal child and I don't like the look of them. I'm sure if I ever actually ate one, it'd be fine. But when I was a kid, I was like, I'm not eating them and just decided I don't like them.

It's like with hummus. I looked at that and thought, that looks disgusting. And then one time I actually tried it. I was like, this is amazing. And then I discovered caramelized onion hummus. I was like, this is probably the nicest food I've ever eaten.

I do have some exceptions. So I eat Moroccan stew with prunes in, and I think it's delicious, but it's one of the very few exceptions. And how do you feel about like the different, they'll have like different chocolates with sea salt or something like that? What? What? Or like chili chocolate. That's wrong as well. I don't get that. Salted caramel. Wrong. All right. Well, pizza wise, if you are met about pineapple on pizza, like we are, Kevin, how does this sound?

What is pineapple? Pineapple is a fruit. Okay. It's fairly soft. It's fairly acidic and tart. What other fruit does that describe? And I've done this and it was also meh. Kiwi. Oh, I was going to say kiwi, and I was like, no, that's too weird. Yeah, I put kiwi on a pizza, and it was fine. I have had a Nutella pizza, and it just made me feel sick, if that's a data point. I mean, that's just chocolate.

spread on toast, isn't it? But fancy. Yeah, but it's a lot fattier than toast, right? Like, a shop-made pizza is very oily. But doesn't the oil come from the sauce and the toppings and stuff? Well, I don't know. Anyway, it made me feel sick, that's all I know. Right. I think any of the sort of like dessert style pizzas that I've seen before, those I'm usually not super enthusiastic about. I just, I don't know if it's the type of bread that like when you do that with.

the chocolates and the creams and all this other stuff. I don't know. Maybe it's the look. I don't know. I'm not super big on that. We've already got pancakes, haven't we, for that? A pizza should have pepperoni, chicken, ideally spicy, onion, bacon, And peppers, like red bell peppers. I'd add jalapenos, but yeah, I'd say you're generally spot on. Yeah, I agree. Just no pineapple. Consensus. Just briefly back on this savory sweet thing.

You're an Englishman like me, Andy, so presumably you quite like a fry-up. Yeah. A fried English breakfast, and you might have bacon, egg, sausage, but because you don't like sweet things, you won't be having any baked beans on yours then. If the baked beans are too sweet, it causes me problems. But a non-sweet baked bean I can handle. All baked beans are sweet. They all have sugar in them. You are wrong. You think you don't like sweet things, but you do.

Yeah, I am a bit wrong because I will eat ketchup as well and ketchup's pretty sweet too. Ketchup's very sweet. I think you have just got this idea in your head and that's it. I'm going to force you to have... Ham and pineapple Hawaiian pizza. The thing is that I've got this idea in my head from eating things and thinking that they tasted horrible. No, I think the internet has corrupted your mind. And pineapple is just meh. Radu asks.

Can you remember your first date, or can you tell us about one of your first dates that you remember, either for the good or the cringe? Unfortunately, or fortunately, however you look at it, yes. My first date with my wife is...

It was an interesting one. I took her out to a place called Fuego, which had very spicy food. Now, my wife is from Spain, and so I thought I would look up some... spanish culture and take her to a place that she would enjoy and throughout this entire meal she just kind of picked at it and didn't really enjoy it and when i asked i'm like hey do you do you like

The food? Is there something wrong with it? And she's like, it's really, really spicy. I don't like spicy food and we don't eat spicy food in Spain. It's all like Mediterranean fish and olive oil and things like that. And I was like, oh. I thought maybe you didn't. She's like, I think you're thinking Mexico. And at that point, when she said that, my entire demeanor just slumped over. I felt like the worst human being alive. And so I paid for the meal, didn't.

Didn't say anything. We walked outside and because I had picked a sort of place around a bunch of cobblestone streets, we walked out and she was wearing heels and then she tripped on the cobblestone. And when I picked her up, I was like, I'm so sorry. She's like, you obviously have never walked in heels before on a road like this. And I was like, I'm never going to hear from this girl ever again. There is not a chance.

And fast forward, we've now been married for over a decade and she's absolutely the love of my life. And I cannot believe she gave me a second chance, but I'm so thankful she did. You know why she did? Because he didn't say, hang on, you speak Mexican though. Thankfully, I did not cross any further lines. I couldn't think of any first date stories or anything like that. But I did get dumped a lot. So I got dumped by pretty much...

all of the girlfriends that I had. I think there was one person where I was responsible for the relationship ending and all of the others that ended, it was the other person. And I remember very clearly the first one. which was just, we used to meet at the train station every day because she got the train home from school. And one day she was just like, I don't remember what she said. I just remember the walk away from the train station.

Starting a long line of dumpings. Well, my first date ever, I think, and this is going to really date this, we went to the cinema to see sliding doors. And so you could say it was a sliding doors moment. But it was just uneventful, really. In fact, I think that may be the only date I've ever been on, come to think of it. And we went to see Sliding Doors.

And that was before I knew who Gwyneth Paltrow was, and I just assumed she was English because she did a very good English accent in it, I thought. And then we walked to a graveyard and kissed a bit. and then ended up in a relationship for ages and then like i've not really had dates as such like i've just kind of just got together like it's i don't know it's all been much more casual than that since

I think the idea of formal, like, let's go on a date, it's just not really something that suits me. I don't know. Just a bit weird, maybe. Yeah, me too. I don't think I've been on many date dates. Like, I've definitely been to things like... going to the cinema with someone or something but i don't know when you say date i think of like it being that it's the way that you're getting together and i like the way that i've got together with people would be through much more informal things i guess

Yeah, exactly, yeah. Just sort of get to know them and then just suddenly things are happening. I think I'll take my wife to a Mexican restaurant for our first date.