Carousel is a LIE!

QRP weekend

Mon, 08 Oct 2018 22:05:52 -0500

This weekend has been 2/3 good for radio.

Open Source Cubesat Workshop 2018

Wed, 03 Oct 2018 23:09:30 -0500

Last week I was incredibly privileged to attend the Open Source Cubesat Workshop, held at the European Space Agency Space Astronomy Centre in Madrid. I was there as a volunteer for Phase 4 Ground, an open source amateur radio project, along with project leader Michelle Thompson and open-source figurehead (and, with Michelle, founder of the Open Research Institute) Bruce Perens.

mpd crash? try removing files in /var/lib/mpd/

Sat, 11 Aug 2018 22:52:59 -0500

Memo to myself: If mpd keeps crashing, try removing the files in /var/lib/mpd.

A Visit to Kennedy Space Center

Wed, 01 Aug 2018 21:03:59 -0500

Today I had the chance to visit Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral. I was there with my family, plus Andy Seely (who guided us there with his awesome wayfinding superpowers) and his two sons. It was an amazing time, and I want to write this down while it's fresh in my mind.

More radio

Sat, 30 Jun 2018 13:18:13 -0500

My parents are visiting for a while. I've had a few days off work, so I've been heading over to Queen's Park in the morning with my dad to do some radio. The weather hasn't been great, so I've been trying some spots near picnic benches so we at least have a place to sit. And I got some QSOs!

Hello, world!

Sat, 23 Jun 2018 10:53:36 -0500

Let's see if this still works....yep, apparently, it does.

Memento

Fri, 22 Sep 2017 20:55:53 -0500

Let's see if I finish this.

Pretzels

Wed, 28 Dec 2016 18:45:47 -0600

Today I was out with the kids, and we came across a place selling fresh-baked pretzels. "Mmm, those smell GOOD," said Eli. "Want to try making some when we get home?" I asked. "Sure!" he said, sounding surprised that such a thing was even possible. One quick check of "More Food that Really Schmecks" later, and we were off to the races.

LISA 2016 - Day 0/1/2

Mon, 05 Dec 2016 16:25:30 -0600

LISA again! This is the fifth? (Washington, Baltimore, San Diego, San Jose, Seattle, and now Boston) sixth! that I've been to. Saturday's flight in was fairly uneventful, except a) it didn't bother my sciatica too much, so yey and b) I forgot my coat on the plane, and it doesn't look like Air Canada has a working system to take "Hey, did you see a coat?" calls.

That's it.

Sat, 19 Nov 2016 10:53:22 -0600

Docker refuses to start. My IPv6 tunnel has started working again after it refused to do so. I have had it with home system administration. I have better things to do with my time.

Out of the pen of Glenn Beck

Fri, 11 Nov 2016 12:48:14 -0600

Holy crap, Glenn Beck is a reasonable man:

Moving on

Thu, 10 Nov 2016 08:36:31 -0600

Well, that happened. Tuesday night I went to bed hoping for better news. I woke up at 2.30am, unable to sleep; after a while I gave up and came down. Still no good news. President Trump it is, help us all.

CAN I ROCK BUSINESS WITH YOU?

Wed, 05 Oct 2016 08:16:08 -0500

Today's title from the subject line of some spam I just got. ("a spam"? "a spammy email"? just "spam"?)

I'm done

Sun, 02 Oct 2016 11:03:50 -0500

I have spent this weekend debugging shit on my home server: I've managed to break my IPv6 tunnel and Docker networking, and for some reason /etc/resolv.conf was emptied I don't even know why. Last weekend I spent far too much time debugging problems with DKIM and SPF and breaking my wife's email, and that was with only one domain; I've still got another to go through. I am thoroughly sick and tired of it.

Today's bit of weirdness

Mon, 26 Sep 2016 10:10:16 -0500

The recent Lawfare Podcast episode "Disrupting ISIS Recruitment Online" makes fascinating listening. It's a recording of a panel discussion consisting of two Google-affiliated companies that do targeted advertising aimed at, well, disrupting ISIS online recruitment, and the US Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs.

Updates, Sep 2016

Thu, 15 Sep 2016 22:24:04 -0500

This week I've been taking Python3 training at work: 4 days of staying at home and concentrating on Python. The result? 4 days to work on Python, sharpening my skills, and that's a good thing. The lecture was not that hot, but what was useful was having the exercises in front of me, waiting to be done and no distractions to keep me from them. And after all that, the biggest difference I notice between Python 2.7 and Python 3 is print "foo" vs print("foo"). (Which shows you how much Python I know. But still.) I finished the exercises a few hours early, so I spent the time trying to solve the coding challenge we give new people at OpenDNS. (I didn't get that one; instead, I got the "this machine is borked in 12 different ways, please solve it" challenge.) This has been a wonderful way to stretch my brain, and work on something very very different from what I do every day. I wish work had the same sort of course for Ruby and Go.

The obligatory mortality piece

Sun, 11 Sep 2016 17:07:59 -0500

There are three people I know that are, or have been, close to death in the last year. One had a double mastectomy last fall when she discovered she had breast cancer. Another fell down confused one day earlier this year and discovered she had stage 4 brain cancer. And the third got taken to hospital a few weeks ago because, it turns out, she's alcoholic and has pretty much destroyed her liver.

Observing Report -- August 5, 2016

Sat, 06 Aug 2016 02:55:09 -0500

Tonight I went out to the local park with the scope. I had a bit better list than last time and stuck to it, and ad the end of the night I was able to shut down & be home in 10 minutes. Not bad at all.

Observing Report - July 23, 2016

Sun, 24 Jul 2016 03:41:56 -0500

Tonight I went out to Boundary Bay with the Dob; it has been a long time since my last observing run. Here's what I saw:

Update

Fri, 15 Jul 2016 22:54:18 -0500

The cloud sensor is behaving badly of late, refusing to post updates. I suspect it's overheating, but it's hard to get data when the thing is across town. I had set up an SSH tunnel back to home so I could connect to it, but did the classic fail when I tried to convert it from running in tmux to running under supervisord and it didn't work and now I can't get back in. Waiting to get back to my inlaws' so I can debug it more properly.