Skywarn Recognition Day Logger
// September 25th, 2009 // No Comments » // 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.
FIXED! Ruby and MySQL “double free or corruption”
// July 11th, 2009 // No Comments » // Development
I was having a problem with the MySQL adapter for Ruby throwing a stack and memory trace when the script was finished running. The script ran fine and from the error below, you can see it’s related to the garbage collection, or lack thereof, that the MySQL adapter is doing.
Here’s the error I got:
*** glibc detected *** ruby: double free or corruption (!prev): 0x09bb64b8 ***
======= Backtrace: =========
/lib/libc.so.6[0x5130f1]
/lib/libc.so.6(cfree+0x90)[0x516bc0]
/usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/mysql-2.7/lib/mysql.so[0x9d9d7b]
ruby(rb_gc_call_finalizer_at_exit+0x91)[0x806ff41]
ruby[0x8059d99]
ruby(ruby_cleanup+0xd0)[0x8065400]
ruby(ruby_stop+0x11)[0x8065511]
ruby[0x806a8f1]
ruby[0x8052edf]
/lib/libc.so.6(__libc_start_main+0xdc)[0x4bfe8c]
ruby[0x8052de1]
The application I was working no longer needed to connect to the database so I put the problem off until I came across it again today. After some research I looked for alternatives to the old adapter, but there was nothing.
Then I came across a post by Stefan Kaes, “Make ruby-mysql create less garbage“. He had found a problem with the amount of objects the adapter created and that was leading to a performance hit.
I thought perhaps the problem I was having would be fixed by applying his patch. It certainly couldn’t hurt anything, right? Who doesn’t want a faster database adapter?
After downloading the patch and applying it on my server, I rebuilt the mysql 2.7 adapter and POW!
Problem solved. Many thanks to Stefan.
Dayton Hamvention Dashboard is Live!
// May 13th, 2009 // No Comments » // APRS, Amateur Radio, Dayton
You can watch my video stream, my APRS location, chat about it, and then see who’s tweeting about it!
I’ll stream while I can, and perhaps even while I’m out in the flea market. I’ll be posting galleries to the page Dayton page which you can find a link to at the top.
See you all there!
Amateur Radio Emergency Communications Enhancement Act of 2009
// May 4th, 2009 // No Comments » // Amateur Radio
Don, KB6NU, posted what the ARRL wrote about a recent bill introduced in the House to help recognize the importance of Amateur Radio to government communications. I’ll certainly be contacting my reps about this and hopefully get some more sponsors for the bill.
2 weeks until dayton 09
// May 2nd, 2009 // No Comments » // APRS, Amateur Radio, Dayton
With less than two weeks left until the Dayton Hamvention, it’s time to think about what will be needed, what will be wanted, and what would be cool. Aside from last year’s insanity of doing the whole thing in one day, we’ll have the 3 full days at the swap/convention on top of having a day prior to check out the Wright Patterson Air Force Museum. I’ve not been there since I was small when my father won the major prize at Dayton, maybe returning will bring good luck!
This year I retired the tried and true, but tired, RadioShack HTX-420. It was a great first radio and will always be a great back up. I’ve acquired a nice set of accessories for it including a TinyTrak II and GPS for it. I’ve longed for the radio my father and his freinds all use, so in place of the old HT, I will be armed with my new Kenwood TH-F6A. I’ll be needing a headset for it, something of decent quality, rather than an MFJ special, hi hi.
The last thing needed this time over last year has already been given since we’ll be spending 4 days down in Dayton, rather than the one I was allowed to have (my XYL was 7 months pregnant). It sure will be nice to document our travels, our adventures, and our return, without that rush to get back in just one day. I can say the drive back last year was not fun near the end at 3am.
I’ll also be streaming live video of the trip down and up via ChaserTV for those people who just can’t get enough of someone driving through Ohio. On top of that video, I’ll be recording random videos and taking pictures, in sort of a documentary form. I’m thinking something in the way of how I came into ham radio (not that I had a choice with a father and grandfather both being hams) and where it has taken me. I’m working with someone to help on the editing and should have a source for release soon.
Aside from the usual gear, we’ll be using APRS all the way down/up so we can be followed for eyes in chairs and receive messages for when my 3G service goes out. I’ll be active in several chats, both IRC and XMPP and be fully online when coverage allows. I’ll be updating my Twitter with live photos and updates and if anything needs anything, just hit me up there and I’ll keep an eye out.
As with the past few years, I’m hunting for a cheap tablet computer. Perhaps a Fujitsu Stylistic or something similar to have float around the house for quick weather checks and email. I’d also love to tie in some home automation and remote control for the random electronics. As I previously mentioned, I’ll be looking for a good headset for my HT so I can go hands free while I’m there as well as when I’m storm chasing.
Speaking of storm chasing, it might not hurt to get two webcams for a good price. I’d still love to try out the “3D storm chasing” if it didn’t cost that much. Perhaps a window mount for my Inspeed anemometer too, or just another one all together, we’ll see how the pocket of cash holds out!
Of course, I’ll be sure to save enough to get my years worth of 2600 from the van and a few cups of the wheat beer they serve out of the trailer near the bar at the corner of the arena.
It will be fun to again see people you only see in Dayton, a chance to quick up real quick and ask about any great deals. I’ll no doubt pick up some small pieces of this or that while I’m there, just to haggle, and hey, I’m a General now so I’ll be looking at a whole new kind of amateur use.
We’ll see you down there!
general ham ticket exam passed
// April 26th, 2009 // No Comments » // Amateur Radio
So the plan was to take my General Class License Exam in Dayton. Sounded great, it would give me enough time to study even if I was busy, and would have that ‘coolness’ of getting it ‘in Dayton’. Ah well, so much for that.
Prior to reading any sort of study material, I believe I was scoring only 20 percent; after I read a study guide, I was scoring in the 80s. I even took a practice right before leaving and only missed four.
That was to be the number I missed on the exam that I took the day before. As with my Technician class exam, my General was being administered in South Lyon at 9am, bright and early. I was on my way home with my CSCE before 10am!
I used a study guide made by Dan Romanchik, KB6NU, “The No-Nonsense General Class License Study Guide“. I had found several book or guides on the Internet, but the sentence structure of the answers to the questions made it feel easier to learn. There was an even flow for me to read the answers, rather than some guides where you have to stop and go with your read all the while trying to steer away from the wrong answers. I read it through once and then went back and re-read what sections I had trouble with.
There were some typos and some answers not in there but it allowed me to study quickly and improve greatly in a short amount of time. Thanks to Dan for putting together something so useful!
The next step is to get some gear and wire and start having some fun. While I’ll love phone, I think I’ll veer into the digital stuff pretty quick. I also look forward to talking to my grand father up in the U-P and the rest of the world!
NCEP Viewer Version 0.8
// April 6th, 2009 // No Comments » // Development, KWiXS, NCEP Viewer, Weather
I’ve gone ahead and updated the code to support templated image URLs. This makes for supporting a wider range of image sources much easier. This also means that it will be supporting more than just NCEP images, so the name and location will be changing soon. I may leave the NCEP version up just for those images on NCEP.
Because of the possible sources for images, I’ll be creating a new interface so you can add/remove any source you want from the viewer. I doubt those in the Plains will really want the DTX WRF runs.
And that’s the other addition to this version, the DTX WRF Hemispheric resolution runs are now available. Currently it only supports the latest run, so there’s no way to look at the previous run and the current, but new version are being worked on by DTX so stay tuned on that front. I may also incorporate some sort of archiving locally so I can support this feature even if DTX does not.
As always, let me know if there are any bugs or additions you’d like to see.
Stormchasing Preparations
// March 25th, 2009 // No Comments » // APRS, Amateur Radio, Storm Chasing, Weather
Yesterday I tested out the key addition to my storm chasing arsenal, streaming video.
ChaserTV.com is my new home for streaming all of my storm chases this year. I chose them not only because I favor their choice in technology, Flash Media Encoder with a cloud-based infrastructure, but because of their open support for the chaser. Other services require non-compete and exclusivity agreements, something I’m not really about. Might work for some people, but I’m just a leasurely chaser who isn’t out to make a buck, but won’t mind if a few float my way.
The primary concern was my switch last year from Sprint to AT&T for cellular serivce. I was able to use Sprint’s EVDO Rev.A last year to pull down radar data without a problem, even while chatting it up amongst other chasers. There’s no doubt the EVDO blows the socks off of 3G (they’re both technically 3G but I’ll just use their industry designation) in terms of download, but can be fairly equal in the upload. For downloading, AT&T is quite behind but so long as I can get the data I need, when I need it, then I’ve not much to complain about.
So with my father, grandfather, and several other chasers/watchers, watching, I set out to stream my drive home from work. The first issue was that I failed to set my bitrate… 3G doesn’t like it when you try to upload at 650kbps apparently. After pulling over and going down to 100kbps I was able to stream with little to no stuttering or stalling. Success!
The next step is going to be testing the uploading of video while downloading radar content and maintaining chat via SpotterChat. Perhaps I’ll give that a go this weekend on my trip up to the Nation Weather Service for a SkyWarn meeting.
The one problem that presented itself was the lack of SpotterNetwork updates. While I did have the client open, and was even able to manually send an update, it failed to send automatic regular updates of my position. The client looks kind of janky in my opinion, like something you’d see the AOL skriptkiddies in the mid 90s using. I toy with thoughts of writing my own client in Ruby and Shoes, perhaps if the Earth’s rotation slows and we get some more hours in a day.
This past weekend I installed two NMO mounts into my trunk lid and currently have a 1/4 wave and 5/8 wave dual band antennas. One will be used for my Kenwood TM-733A while the other for APRS and listening to other frequencies. Eventually I’ll have two 1/4 wave dual-band antennas on there so the wind won’t bother the thin aluminum they used for the trunk lid.
Once the APRS is up and running full time in my vehicle I’ll not have to worry about sending SpotterNetwork updates directly as it will just pick up my APRS updates. I’m looking at ways to integrate SpotterNetwork, APRS, and Twitter and I’m currently working on the Twitter implementation of that.
The last peice to all of this is getting my wife involved. Next month I’ll be taking her with me to the SkyWarn training in Garden City so she can get familiar with the cloud structures, radar signatures, and what it’s all about. This is also so she won’t be as clueless should I be gone on a chase when severe weather heads for the area. After that I’ll teach her some basics on radar imagery so she can help navigate when we go out on a few chases this year. I’m really excited to bring her along so she can see that I’m not actually driving INTO the tornado, as has been previously thought.
