A Grand Opportunity – Ignite Detroit
// February 19th, 2010 // 2 Comments » // Amateur Radio, Social Media
Earlier this month I submitted my topic, “Hamming it up!”, to the Ignite Detroit organizers, knowing amateur radio was what I was going to talk about, but not a clue on how. With the support of many people I was selected, along with 15 others, to present my topic on February 25th. I am humbled by being given the opportunity to introduce over 200 people to Amateur Radio, and the process of developing my presentation has made me aware of perspectives I would not have otherwise encountered.
As a geek all my life, predisposed by my father and grandfather’s love of electronics and computers, I have analyzed and perceived just about every aspect of my human experience a little differently. While my wife may sometimes get annoyed, I have an uncontrollable urge to point out snafus in television shows, rather than pay attention to the actual character dialog. It’s something subconscious, something I have long given up trying to fight, and instead welcome with open arms.
Perhaps that’s why Amateur Radio, and technology in general, has appealed to me. The people, groups, and organizations that surround these interests are made up of those who see things differently. To me, these are people who see technology as a putty or clay from which they can build their own imagination into reality. If there is one single thing that I’ve learned from fellow amateurs, and the communities they make up, it’s never fearing to ask, “Why not?” The methods and ingenuity hams typically show in an effort to see their ideas realized are nothing short of amazing and awe inspiring.
The chance to share this passion and insight to the rest of the world, at least as I saw it, forced the pride within me to jump and scream, never relenting until I finally hit the ’submit’ button. I’m pretty sure that same pride had a mild stroke when I received the email that my topic has been chosen.
When I sat down to put together my 20 slides, I initially wanted to inform the audience about why they should get involved. That urgency to bring new people into the hobby is something felt by most anyone passionate about what they love to do on their spare time. If I had gone that route, no doubt it would have sounded like an elevator pitch that was 4 minutes and 45 seconds too long. Lucky for me I suppose that I didn’t know how to start my ‘pitch’. Eventually I took a break, watched some TED presentations, and thought about how I would feel if someone was presenting a pitch about television character dialog.
One of the greatest abilities that humans have is self-discussion. You can call it self-reflection if you’d like a less psychotic sounding term, but really, who doesn’t talk to themselves in their head? We know exactly what does not interest us, and we know why. It could be due to something else present, winning our attention, or an aspect of what we’re perceiving as negative, or something else entirely. But there’s always a reason, and the human mind was built to reason.
In a world where we are continually fed more and more information, our ability to retain attention and interest has decreased drastically. When you add the fact that people are now more than ever capable of accessing specifically sought information, introducing something new to someone has never been a greater challenge. Perhaps that’s why you’re seeing a growing emergence of people rebelling against this constant barrage of typed information. The number of people actively seeking new and foreign information is expanding, as evidenced by TED, TEDx, Ignite, and other conferences.
And that was it.
I didn’t need to ‘pitch’ my audience. I didn’t need to sell them on my hobby or passion. I didn’t need to tell them why they should associate any subjective adjective to what I love. If there is one thing the social media scene here in Detroit has taught me, it’s that smart people are never disinterested in something, they’re simply interested in something else. They crave new and creative ideas so they can better reflect upon and modify their own perspectives. It’s the same fundamental that drives radio amateurs to bounce their signal off the moon, or ‘foxhunt’ rogue radio signals, or play with radio waves 100 times the frequency of your wireless router. It’s the same fundamental that drives people to innovate and invent; to embrace a certain level of chaos to see new order. Simply put, that which we already know is boring, and I’ve yet to meet a boring person at a tweetup or conference.
From that point on, the hardest part about developing my presentation was finding the pictures to convey various aspects of the hobby, even those that I don’t have an interest in…yet. I hope those in attendance learn something new, whether it’s about amateur radio, themselves, or something completely unrelated. I suppose I’d even be happy with the notion you’ve just discovered that the person in front of you has a crinkle in his left ear that’s not in his right. I simply ask that you reflect on why that’s interesting and learn something new about yourself, because in the end that’s what this is really all about.
INSERT IGNORE and DataMapper
// February 18th, 2010 // No Comments » // DataMapper, Development, Ruby
So I needed a way to replicate the ‘INSERT IGNORE’ statement in DataMapper and being that the code documentation is sparse, and I didn’t feel like force feeding an SQL statement into DM, I wrote some ruby code to replicate it.
If anyone has a better, or more refined solution, please let me know!
rescue DataObjects::IntegrityError => e
@logger.error e
unless e.code == 1062
throw e
end
end
Happy Birthday HAL!
// January 12th, 2010 // No Comments » // Music, Random Stuff
To celebrate HAL 9000’s birthday, I present free for download, a track I produced a couple of year ago.
Enjoy!
BrainStorm: Storm Chasing Tool for Linux
// December 28th, 2009 // No Comments » // Storm Chasing, Weather
Adam Boggs has release version 0.9 of the BrainStorm, a storm chasing tool for the linux platform. The new platform integrates web-based maps, such as Google Maps, radar and warning polygon data, and gps data pulled from an attached device.
The software is released under the GPLv2 license and as source code, so you’ll have to build it and install it yourself. While this is helped along by the use of autogen, there are dependencies that are not listed. The following had to be installed on my Ubuntu 9.04 system:
libtool
libsoap-dev
After installing these two I was able to run autogen, which will have a default prefix of /usr/local/ . A third library came up as not loadable when I went to run the binary, libosmgpsmap, a quick install of libosmgpsmap0 resolved this.
I was not able to test the GPS capabilities since I didn’t have mine handy enough. I’ll test that out at a later date.
As for the radar and severe overlay…
It only comes with radar sites in the ‘alley’ and are hardcoded, making the software somewhat useless in this respect for those outside of the radar coverage area. The warning polygons are actually overlayed images from the NWS site so they do appear pixelated. It seems this is how the software mainly works, by overlaying images upon the map, rather than creating shapes from polygon coordinate sets.
For the radars that it does offer, you can view various types of radar data that are available on the NWS site, including 1 hour precipitation and both velocity types. Only one type of radar can be viewed for all visible radar sites at a time. You’re also not given a choice of elevation angles so I’m assuming it is defaulted to the lowest.
The key here is that it can show your position in relation to a storm and give an idea of what is warned and not, on linux. For that, it does a good job… if you’re in the radar umbrella. What really needs to be improved is the ability to change more properties, such as radar types and sites to show, and even what is shown on the screen.
I look forward to where the software goes from here and so is Adam from the sound of it. It’s written in C/GTK+ and Adam states that anyone is more than welcome to help out.
Customized Ignition Switch Timer from Aug 09 QST
// November 30th, 2009 // No Comments » // APRS, Amateur Radio, Mobile
So the August issue of QST had an ignition switch timer that was very easy to build and implement. I thought this was perfect for my car so I didn’t have to worry about disconnecting my OpenTracker+ and Icom 228 from power when I didn’t want to use it. There was just one problem, there was no way to make it optional; sometimes I don’t want to use APRS.
First a note about the parts list. There is a 10k ohm resistor (R6) that is not there, but shown in the schematic and PCB (if you order one from Far Circuits like I did).
Now, onto the problem of making my APRS optional. After perusing the circuit, my father and I thought best to dremel away the trace between Q2 and ground. The only concern is that the transistor would not like floating but we’ll test that further once it’s finished. After drilling new holes for the switch between the transistor and ground, I put the components to the board and everything looked good.
The next step would be to put in a 6 terminal rail in a large project box so I could control up to 3 devices with the timer switch. Of course, everything has powerpoles on it so I can quickly dis/connect devices and radios.
Final installation should be on Thursday before our Extra class and I’ll post up some pics of my handy work on Friday.
Twitter Serves Up Bad Bacon
// November 10th, 2009 // No Comments » // Social Media, Twitter
So I got a notice from Twitter that I was being blessed with their new retweet interface and let me tell you, it’s creepy.
I mean, suppose you’re just checking your timeline for the 40th time of the day (don’t lie), and you’re expecting your usual group of profile pics that hopefully resemble your followed should you ever have the chance to meet them. These are people you spend a lot of face to pixel time with!
You turn away, just for a moment, forever needing to bludgeon the spam from your inbox, and when you look for that smile from that person you forgot you were following — AHHH!
Who the hell is this person and why are they invading my social space?! Did I leave the door open? Did my business card fall out of pocket in the parking lot?
Wait. No.
I’ve been subjected to what I’m now going to call, ‘bad bacon’. You know, that stuff that if you tried to eat it would probably chip your tooth; burnt to a crisp so bad it smells more of carbon than meat. Yeah, that stuff. It’s supposed to be good because you wanted it in the first place, or at least asked for it, right? Nope. Now, that desire for something tasty has left you subject to that which you might not want, and that’s meant in a non-insulting way to the awesome bacon you’re used to.
And why? Why do I have to be served this destroyed treat by Twitter?
Interestingly, the more I think about it, if you want people to use your new feature, then perhaps that’s how you have to cut out this ‘bad bacon’. You’re going to force me to use lists in order to see only tweets by those people who I follow? Wow, very nice play.
Even if they later allow for you to turn this off, I find it hard to think it’s going to be default. This is a perfect way to force the user to build lists which offer more metrics than even Google or Microsoft can shake a fist at. Influence, just check how many lists they’re on. I mean, they have virtually created Kevin Bacon!
It all comes full circle. Rather than letting the desktop clients use their loyal user base to help define how to better implement retweets, which mind you were not controversial enough to warrant this change, they’d rather force you to a feature they just released to mixed review.
Until they give me the option in my settings, I’m stuck with this bad bacon when using their web interface.
No thanks.
Interview: HamBrief.TV #47
// September 28th, 2009 // No Comments » // Amateur Radio, Development, Random Stuff, Skywarn
I recently had the pleasure of being interviewed by Chris Matthieu, N7ICE, for HamBrief #47. We talk about my involvement with Wayne County’s Skywarn program, emergency communications, and other assorted rag chewing.
Thank again to Chris for the opportunity to talk about one of my hobbies!
You can find more information at:
Skywarn Recognition Day Logger
// September 25th, 2009 // 1 Comment » // Amateur Radio, Development, Weather
For the last couple of years at the SRD event at DTX (NWS in White Lake) we’ve used a logger I’ve built using Ruby on Rails. Last year I did a complete rewrite only days before the event, but this year I’m building on the existing codebase. One of the features I’ve added since last year is an Ajax dupe checker. It’s pretty simple but goes pretty far in saving us having to hit the Submit button.
Right now I’m looking for ways to improve the function and feature-set and in November begin trying to spruce up the interface. I’d like more of it to be Ajax, but degrade extremely well as it is with the ham community that they tend to use older hardware.
Eventually this will build out to be an event logger that can be extended to work for any sort of event, with a focus on amateur radio oriented activities. From Skywarn nets, to disaster events, I want to make the logger that can easily manage and display what happened.
I’m seeking thoughts and ideas on the SRD Logger right now, but I’ll be thinking of how to abstract its parts out. If you have an interest in using it this year, or want to help beta test the existing software, just shoot me a line.
Reflections of a Previously Ignorant Student
// September 25th, 2009 // 1 Comment » // Amateur Radio, Random Stuff
Yesterday I started a 14-week class to upgrade my ham ticket to Extra Class. I’m fairly anxious to learn all the fun stuff and even have the chance to help my dad! He too is taking the class and while I’m at least 20 years everyone’s junior, I feel like I’m back in high school again.
We’re at what used to be an old Jr. High School, which is now an adult education and autistic center. Each room is stocked with the old desks of my elementary school (which is actually just across the football field and the street) and even came with the old classroomy smell of chalk and books.
It’s funny how when I reflect about the time great time I had in school, I repeatedly think of how nowadays I’m so damn interested in the things I cared nothing for (other than getting a passing grade). It’s a good thing I feel like I jipped myself out of only a few years of learning and not half my life. Perhaps it’s time to really think about night class. I’ve tried the online learning, but for someone who sits in front of a computer for countless hours at a day, a plastic chair and a desk/table might not be such a bad change.
But what? Philosophy? (Solar/Astro/Theoretical)-Physics? Business? Archeology? Electrical Engineering? So many choices. It’s like I’m a kid again, but this time with a hunger for knowledge. These days I lean towards Philosophy if I was to go for purely selfish reasons, but I know Business is probably the way to go.
With life hopefully slowing with what seems like the days of autumn, I’ll bring a focus back into learning and education. With any luck and lots of hope, my son will appreciate what I had such high disregard for growing up.
RedZ: Revolution or more Z’s?
// July 14th, 2009 // No Comments » // Random Stuff
“Introducing Patent Pending Search 2.0″ by RedZ Revolution Search
They seek to provide results by website snapshots to speed up your access to accurate results. Do they find it or put me to sleep?
“…most people do not have the time to patience to read through page after page of text based listings.”
That’s why the real goal should be giving us the most relevant results first. While I see that the company is trying to move the decision making more towards the human mind, you can not get around the fact that human thinking is linear.
“The Web sites are the results instead of plain ordinary text, allowing you to sift through massive data quickly.”
A computer is able to produce and cycle imagery faster that our mind can comprehend, at least that’s the common understanding. It’s therefore our own mind creates a bottleneck in the flow of information and decision making, not the method of display in my opinion.
It seems from information provided on their site, that RedZ is focused on presenting the data in a visual way, rather than a textual format. So what’s new? Seems like a gimmick and even potential advertisers on the WebHostingTalk forum are not buying it either.
Several site statistic sources are putting their daily visitors in the tens of thousands, so you’d have to rely on their network to provide good numbers for your money. They also don’t charge of pay-per-click so as to avoid the chance of fraud, another key component of their pitch.
I’m not impressed with what they are looking to provide, especially when there is already quite a bit of thought about how a website’s design affects the human mind and decision making. I don’t want that to have an effect on mine, and I like my results to be normalized; it’s one less thing to worry about.
For me, RedZzzz…
How I got here:
I was brought to them by a tweet by @suedecrush.
