Anyone with tech skills will relate to this…  I think this is my new favorite xkcd comic!

Unfortunately, this is EXACTLY what most wiring diagrams in QST (ham radio magazine) look like to me:

So a buddy and I were chatting today about Ubuntu and their naming convention, and decided that we needed to come up with a bunch of possible names for the upcoming Ubuntu 10.10 release, which is due in October!  Sometimes we springboarded from one adjective/animal to the next, so you’ll see some closely-related names…

• Maudlin Mantis
• Morose Manatee
• Mellow Manatee
• Mossy Manatee
• Marauding Mongoose
• Marauding Mudskipper
• Magnanimous Moose
• Morose Moose
• Maternal Macaque
• Miffed Meerkat
• Majestic Mammoth
• Moody Martin

Also seen on the Ubuntu Blog: Masturbating Monkey!  :-)

Post your original creations (or links to your favorites found elsewhere) below!

There is an updated version of this tutorial for Ubuntu 11.10!

For years, I have been a big fan of the usenet newsgroups. I think it’s one of the best little niches left on the internet, and it has one of the best ranges in content…  On usenet, you can have civilized, academic conversation, or unruly flame-wars between fanatics. You can also find some of the coolest binaries available on the net…hard-to-find music, out of print books in e-text, and pictures ranging from serene wallpapers to…well just about anything.

When Ubuntu’s newest version, Karmic Koala, came out, I was very dismayed to find that the distribution of the Pan newsreader available via the Synaptic package manager was broken.  Basically, any image that was posted as multi-part refused to load in the default window.

With some help from the folks on the pan-users mailing list, I was finally able to compile the code from a source repository being kept up by K.Haley, pan’s volunteer coder.  But I thought it might be nice to provide a step-by-step guide for newer linux users, as the whole process of downloading source from a github repository, the tracking down of the necessary development libraries, and the entire compilation process can be daunting.  Therefore, I came up with the following list of commands to run to get a patched version of Pan running from a normal install of Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala). Read the rest of this entry »

So I bought a very inexpensive GPS off the Woot! website late last year.  It’s worked very well for me, and I was quite happy with the purchase…until last Saturday.  On Saturday the 13th of June, the GPS just quit syncing with the GPS constellation!  At first, I wrote it off to a cheap device, and figured that I’d had my fun.  But then I started poking around…and what I saw didn’t make sense.

I looked at the GPS signal screen, trying to see if the internal antenna wire had somehow come undone.  Maybe this was something I could fix myself!  No, I was seeing good signals from 8 to 11 satellites…and still no location sync!

Ok, so that points to software.  I started poking around the web, and found that I wasn’t alone…and that Navsupport was already hard at work on a fix.

Here’s the link

You’ll need a blank SD card, an SD reader, and about 10 minutes to perform the fix.  I did it, and it works great!  So what are you waiting for?  More GPS adventures await!

Ok, so I admit that last night wasn’t the kind of geeking out that most hams dream of. I didn’t contact a ham in a far-off-place, nor did I participate via HF in a search and rescue operation in the Grand Tetons.

It was fun, though!

N8MIQ (Karl) and I were playing around with the PSK31 digital mode on 2m SSB last night. He lives about 15 miles away. He had his rig set at ONE watt, and I had mine at it’s lowest setting of 5 watts.

We copied each other 100%, the signal floating in on the ether just fine.  Never mind that if we were working FM 2 meters, we likely wouldn’t have been able to hear each other.  I sent him a link to Ham Radio Deluxe and to the Feld Hell Club, and we’ll likely be exploring those (and other!) modes in the very near future.

So the Large Hadron Collider came online today, and has passed its first few tests without blowing up.  As a scientifically-minded individual, I’m amazed by the numbers of folks who are really, truly afraid that this device is going to somehow end the world.  I’m not even going to acknowledge any of these kooks with a link, but here’s a breakdown of their fears:

• The LHC will spawn off a [microscopic] black hole that will consume the Earth.
• It will create “strangelets” that will convert the Earth into a lump of dead, Strange matter.
• It will somehow create a wormhole that could open extra-dimensional doors.  (sounds a bit like Half-Life!)

What WILL happen through operation of the LHC is an expansion of our understanding of elementary particles, quantum physics, space-time, special relativity, and the conditions in which our Universe was created.  We will further our species’ knowledge and capabilities.  The LHC will take us places that Einstein and Hawking could only dream about.