tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-359018252012-02-01T16:06:22.258-08:00A bloke with too many hobbies.Peter Markshttps://profiles.google.com/113638291068850161611noreply@blogger.comBlogger5991100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-33864652104665538182012-02-01T16:06:00.000-08:002012-02-01T16:06:22.273-08:00

My daughter decided to get some new ear piercings a few weeks back. One went through cartilage near the top of her ear. The ear went red and swelled up so much that the stud disappeared into the wound. Our GP had a go at getting it out but in the end sent us on to hospital emergency, which after the minor surgery, admitted her for forty eight hours. Mona Vale Hospital did a great job, and

Peter Markshttps://profiles.google.com/113638291068850161611noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-18005529833729045612012-01-29T01:36:00.000-08:002012-01-29T01:36:28.345-08:00

I've been doing some iOS programming recently and needed to load a UITableView with images from a web site. You don't want to load images synchronously as the view scrolls or it kills the user interface response so that needs to be done in another thread. There is some nice code around to do that but after watching the Stanford lecture on the topic I'm totally turned on to the GCD block pattern

Peter Markshttps://profiles.google.com/113638291068850161611noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-77065474389680009452012-01-24T19:43:00.000-08:002012-01-25T00:56:09.656-08:00

Bouncing off the Megauploads story, I had an opportunity to reflect on RNBreakfast on why there is a widespread problem with people obtaining illegal copies of (in particular) movies. I think the problem stems from the big studios failing to keep pace with the technology habits of the general public, this has turned Mr and Mrs Average  into a pirate, not because they want to be, but because they

Peter Markshttps://profiles.google.com/113638291068850161611noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-87183975035261922282012-01-24T01:04:00.000-08:002012-01-24T01:04:13.023-08:00

For many years we've headed north to Coffs Harbour at this time of year for the radio expo. Alas, this year it wasn't on - but we decided to go anyway. It's a lovely place, we often discuss the idea of moving there to escape Sydney. There was a confluence of radio though as I'd just sold an IC-718 on eBay and the buyer was Scott, VK2AET, who lives not far north so we met up and had our own

Peter Markshttps://profiles.google.com/113638291068850161611noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-42513678999150716422012-01-10T19:09:00.000-08:002012-01-10T19:09:17.672-08:00

Rob, VK2ZNZ, showed me a marvellous catalog of old Ericsson telephone handsets. These are drawings but many look photo-realistic and show great skill by the artists. Ericsson Type AC 110 "Magneto table telephone" Ericsson Type AC 210 "Magneto table telephone" Ericsson Type AB 140-145 "Magneto wall telephone" Ericsson Type AC 130-140 "Magneto table telephones" Ericsson Type AC

Peter Markshttps://profiles.google.com/113638291068850161611noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-5743013677312035512012-01-10T17:49:00.000-08:002012-01-10T23:00:56.004-08:00

Dave, VK3ASE, tipped me off to this one. There's a, now obsolete, video camera from Kodak (soon to be obsolete too), called the Zi8. It has two things I look for - high quality video and an audio input port. Here's some test footage, but I recommend you go to YouTube and switch to HD to watch it here. Highlights are burnt out and it really needs a tripod to get good quality. It's much

Peter Markshttps://profiles.google.com/113638291068850161611noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-4498109136644274862012-01-07T20:57:00.000-08:002012-01-07T20:58:24.948-08:00

Old friend Jennifer Lewis has just returned to Australia after working in London and Indonesia. She's been doodling in a sketchbook too good effect. Check out her blog with scans of her sketches as she's not getting much traffic so far. Great stuff!

Peter Markshttps://profiles.google.com/113638291068850161611noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-48303844422963615482012-01-05T13:36:00.000-08:002012-01-05T13:36:33.597-08:00

An informative, entertaining, tasty, thirst-quenching meeting of the Sydney Python group was held last night in a pub in the Sydney CBD (instead of at Google for a change). The new venue had has pros and cons. On the plus side, we could order Thai food which was delivered to us when ready; it's a nice central location, just near Town Hall; and the house beer was just $3.60 a scooner. The down

Peter Markshttps://profiles.google.com/113638291068850161611noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-59463707721386555192012-01-03T01:06:00.000-08:002012-01-03T01:07:04.579-08:00

The weather has turned in Sydney and we have very pleasant sunny days with a refreshing wind. Today I woke early and went for a brisk walk listening to a podcast. In the morning I worked, doing a geospatial project converting a Django project from Google Maps 2 to 3 as well as working to handle complex polygons efficiently (tens of thousands of points) with holes in them. Lunch with Jonathan,

Peter Markshttps://profiles.google.com/113638291068850161611noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-8115427935209019882011-12-28T13:47:00.000-08:002011-12-28T13:47:19.965-08:00

In this age of tiny computer speakers, or worse - laptop speakers, it's easy to forget just how good music can sound in a decent set of headphones. I must be a bit of an addict as over the years the headphone collection has grown to more than ten pairs. While you generally get what you pay for, it's not always the case. There's a bit of a balance to be struck between comfort and quality. When

Peter Markshttps://profiles.google.com/113638291068850161611noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-66605495953808062082011-12-27T00:40:00.000-08:002011-12-27T00:40:52.257-08:00

Dave came to check out the shed. Unfortunately during coffee he was struck by a car... Seems OK now. Incidentally, WSPR on 20m is the busiest I've seen it:

Peter Markshttps://profiles.google.com/113638291068850161611noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-9056934253433015952011-12-25T14:07:00.000-08:002011-12-25T14:07:06.980-08:00

It used to be that I was in a tiny minority who used a Mac. I've always regarded this as a competitive advantage - I got on with my work while others fought with viruses, weird behaviour and a generally hostile environment. Something's changed and a few years ago fellow programmers all switched to Macs, now this has broadened to the extended family too. One potential drawback is that I'm the

Peter Markshttps://profiles.google.com/113638291068850161611noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-31736071265568115852011-12-22T19:51:00.000-08:002011-12-27T21:37:26.962-08:00

A new ham radio is about to become available and like too many others, I'm waiting to find out the price and place my order. The Elecraft KX3 looks like a worthy successor to the popular Yaesu FT-817 for portable low power operation. This radio covers 160-6 meters, power 10W, weighs 0.7kg, and can draw as little as 150mA on receive. Elecraft have said that they plan to start taking orders in

Peter Markshttps://profiles.google.com/113638291068850161611noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-34720420816576084132011-12-22T17:27:00.000-08:002011-12-22T19:56:42.173-08:00

Stephen, VK2BLQ, sent around an email pointing to a great archive of scanned issues of a popular ham radio magazine from my childhood, "73 Amateur Radio". They come up in a rather strange order, like all the Decembers together, but they are high resolution scans saved as PDFs so perfect for reading on an iPad for inspiration. It's a great way to see the march of technology from 1961 through

Peter Markshttps://profiles.google.com/113638291068850161611noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-52206984004434272912011-12-22T17:11:00.000-08:002011-12-22T17:13:04.968-08:00

My wife's 24 inch iMac recently started exhibiting an annoying fault - it would, seemingly at random, just switch off. Not a crash, not a shutdown, it just powered off. My first thought was some sort of thermal problem tripping the power supply but oddly it did not seem related to the machine being busy or having been on for a long time. I ran the Apple Hardware Test software which on very

Peter Markshttps://profiles.google.com/113638291068850161611noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-73216617241015910842011-11-29T23:06:00.001-08:002011-11-29T23:20:00.434-08:00

Today I visited the Australian PV Solar Energy Exhibition at Darling Harbour in Sydney. There were a lot of Chinese PV Solar cell manufacturers on hand and it seems like wholesale prices are diving to an incredible 77 cents per watt (we pay around $5 per watt retail so there's a good margin somewhere). Interestingly, polycrystalline panels seem to be almost as efficient as monocrystalline and

Peter Markshttps://profiles.google.com/113638291068850161611noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-79592625585589765702011-11-27T20:55:00.001-08:002011-11-27T21:02:06.427-08:00

At Sunday's Amateur Radio NSW Home Brew Group meeting I gave a talk about what I've learned about low voltage solar electricity systems. My thanks to Peter, VK2EMU, for the opportunity to speak and to John, VK2ASU, for shooting the video. If you find this interesting and want to know more there is a book "Small Solar" available for less than $3 from Amazon for the Kindle and in the Apple

Peter Markshttps://profiles.google.com/113638291068850161611noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-85502216211714895872011-11-26T22:53:00.001-08:002011-11-26T22:58:29.326-08:00

I have an MSI U-200 netbook that dual-boots Windows XP and Linux. For a long time I used Ubuntu but when I upgraded to 11.04 wireless networking wouldn't work and being unable to figure out the magic incantation decided to try Fedora. There's no built WSPR for Fedora that I could find so I've been running it under Windows XP. Lots of people were spotting me (running under 5W from an ft-817) but

Peter Markshttps://profiles.google.com/113638291068850161611noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-41107696119447738582011-11-23T16:27:00.001-08:002011-11-28T00:21:48.750-08:00

When I need to do a bit of Cocoa programming I normally turn to the excellent books from Big Nerd Ranch. iOS 5 and Xcode 4.2 has changed normal practice quite substantially and I was struggling along trying to re-interpret the old code in the new environment. A couple of days ago the latest videos of the Stanford computer science class covering iPad and iPhone App development turned up in

Peter Markshttps://profiles.google.com/113638291068850161611noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-31444866823992433532011-11-21T14:18:00.001-08:002011-11-21T14:23:19.497-08:00

A note to myself really. We have an old but reliable HP Laserjet 1022n laser printer but ever since Snow Leopard it has been printing every second page, with a blank page in between. I used a generic CUPS driver but the quality is very poor. I've found a solution for me, that might work for others. If you set the printer's resolution to 600dpi it seems to print all pages and the quality is good.

Peter Markshttps://profiles.google.com/113638291068850161611noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-59247142429698570842011-11-19T23:59:00.001-08:002011-11-20T00:06:47.607-08:00

Just returned from a weekend away, four hours south of Sydney at Fisherman's Paradise. Here's my QRP portable station: My antenna was a random wire, about 6m long, thrown to a tree from the balcony. The ZM-2ATU antenna tuner does a fine job with a random wire and a counterpoise and never fails to tune up easily. Fine copy on the WIA Sunday broadcast on 80m, 40m but best on 30m. I called

Peter Markshttps://profiles.google.com/113638291068850161611noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-31827607439617482772011-11-09T20:33:00.001-08:002011-11-09T20:41:11.236-08:00

The shed has been marvellous so far, but as foretold by mates Gerald and Ralph, the weak spot will be heat from the sun beating on the corrugated metal roof. Indeed, when the sun is on the roof, it's like a radiator inside. I purchased R3 poly bats, which I had to split in half so they're around R1.5. Backed and held in place with masonite board. It now looks like this inside: It's a

Peter Markshttps://profiles.google.com/113638291068850161611noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-5938835626718835452011-10-20T22:15:00.000-07:002011-11-13T02:23:47.383-08:00

Meeting my objective of having the new ham shack powered totally from solar energy proved to be a little less straight forward than I had imagined. Along the way, I did a lot of research, talked to some very knowledgable people, visited some shops, attended an expo, and did some experimentation of my own. An outcome of all this is that I've collected all my notes on solar panels, charge

Peter Markshttps://profiles.google.com/113638291068850161611noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-41019462025306342192011-10-05T23:38:00.000-07:002011-10-11T01:31:54.105-07:00

I've been learning about powering my ham shack with solar power and have been working on logging battery voltage to get information about how my power budget is going. At first I used an Arduino's A/D to read the voltage and periodically send it out the USB serial port, but as the shed has no mains power the laptop was a major drain on the battery itself. Yes, measuring was really altering the

Peter Markshttps://profiles.google.com/113638291068850161611noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-25482988718146034372011-10-05T19:32:00.000-07:002011-10-05T19:33:04.269-07:00

"OMG Steve Jobs" was the SMS from my daughter. I'd been watching Google Reader only minutes before and it was clear this was set to be the biggest, and fastest spreading, story to date. I feel like I felt in 1980 on hearing that John Lennon was killed. News has evolved to be super-efficient in the last few years. A few friends and a few family sent SMSs, I chatted with others via

Peter Markshttps://profiles.google.com/113638291068850161611noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-83269765295499329472011-10-04T23:28:00.000-07:002011-10-05T19:37:29.788-07:00

Since moving the ham radio station to the new shed, which is located in the back corner of our block, it has become practical to use an open wire line feeder to my dipole. I've often heard that the most versatile and efficient antenna is an open wire feeder to a doublet on the lowest band desired. This antenna can be then tuned to any band. I ordered some nice copper wire and spacers from TTS

Peter Markshttps://profiles.google.com/113638291068850161611noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-37262204600310085042011-09-25T04:17:00.000-07:002011-09-26T03:29:46.956-07:00

Today at the ARNSW Home Brew meeting at dural, Mathew Magee, VK2YAP gave a talk about audio for radio communication. He spoke for about an hour and I've roughly edited it down to 17 minutes. The noise in the background is heavy rain on the metal roof. Thanks so much to Mathew for giving permission for me to record the talk.

Peter Markshttps://profiles.google.com/113638291068850161611noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-29370158701476297822011-09-23T01:06:00.000-07:002011-09-23T01:10:55.066-07:00

This week we took a couple of days out, during off season, north of Sydney at Port Stephens. The water must be very clean here as dolphins swim right up to the jetty: We went on a "wave watching" boat trip and the dolphins like riding the "pressure wave" at the bow of the boat apparently for the fun of it: While wandering around, I had a play with the new Instagram for iPhone.

Peter Markshttps://profiles.google.com/113638291068850161611noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-75043369416905349102011-09-18T20:03:00.000-07:002011-09-18T20:05:32.158-07:00

A new toy just arrived... While not quite a "gift", for AU$40 (+$15 postage), it's pretty cheap for a tiny transceiver with a state of the art software defined radio inside. The feature that gets most prominence on the box is the "high illumination flashlight" feature. I bought via eBay out of Hong Kong and it turned up 9 days after I ordered, which seems excellent. Despite the box

Peter Markshttps://profiles.google.com/113638291068850161611noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-44178573988267895082011-09-14T19:48:00.000-07:002011-09-14T19:48:59.571-07:00

The new ham shack is up and running. The 65W solar panel is placed simply on the north facing side of the roof. There is some shade during the day but it seems to be producing enough for my operating time. The little charge controller supplied by Jaycar was really meant for a night light so I purchased something more elaborate from Hong Kong via Ebay made by ProVista Technology. It's a very

Peter Markshttps://profiles.google.com/113638291068850161611noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-33906976720245661582011-09-12T01:08:00.000-07:002011-09-14T19:50:27.132-07:00

Ever since we filled in the swimming pool a few years back, I've noticed that there's enough space in the back yard for a shed. Here's a likely spot: This morning the truck arrived with all the bits. Although offered as a kit, I'm glad I paid to get the guys to do the construction for me. The sheer weight of some parts, such as the solid floor would have been difficult for me, let alone

Peter Markshttps://profiles.google.com/113638291068850161611noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-3269151374938493142011-09-01T19:56:00.000-07:002011-09-14T19:52:42.253-07:00

Great news, I'm getting a shed. Every man needs a shed and the plan is to move my ham radio gear into it. It's still a few weeks off but I'm going to try to power it mostly from a solar system which ideally should be able to keep a small WSPR station going indefinitely. Solar panels seem to vary a great deal in price, specialist solar shops seem very expensive, Jaycar is in the middle, and

Peter Markshttps://profiles.google.com/113638291068850161611noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-14392269241284799472011-08-30T20:20:00.000-07:002011-08-30T20:21:46.057-07:00

This week I had an opportunity to join the collective commentating about what the resignation of Steve Jobs from the position of Apple CEO will mean. The interview went to air on Australia Network Newsline around Asia. Normally I chat on radio so a bit of TV experience was interesting. Everyone looks good on radio. For TV, and particularly high definition, things like makeup and lighting are

Peter Markshttps://profiles.google.com/113638291068850161611noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-47930175857973512922011-08-27T22:13:00.000-07:002011-09-14T19:55:54.174-07:00

Just returned from a wonderful day at the Blue Mountains Amateur Radio Club's Winterfest. A new venue this year, with more space, and it was fabulous. Lots of interesting new and second hand stuff. Familiar faces from Dural were in attendance. Some really great equipment in various states of working or not. I purchased some PCBs at reasonable rates. Lots of fine

Peter Markshttps://profiles.google.com/113638291068850161611noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-56278303088535596442011-08-24T21:19:00.000-07:002011-08-24T21:19:55.015-07:00

We dined last night at the Casino before attending the musical "Hair Spray". I do not have the gambling gene but am pleased to report a significant win on the night in the form of an ice-cream. My daughter went and claimed the prise and when she finished the free ice-cream it also had a free voucher stick! Who says you can't win at the casino.

Peter Markshttps://profiles.google.com/113638291068850161611noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-11029080559312387462011-08-21T00:07:00.001-07:002011-08-23T21:59:35.372-07:00

Just returned home after a full weekend of the second Python conference here in Sydney.   Attendance was up on last year but still has a way to go. The Wifi worked really well, thanks GitHub. Programmers seem to carry Macs these days, next is Linux and then there are a few Windows users.   There were some wonderful talks and some disastrous demos, but that's the way it goes. I came away

Peter Markshttps://profiles.google.com/113638291068850161611noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-69391225329753165322011-08-17T21:31:00.001-07:002011-08-23T22:01:47.851-07:00

I remember being impressed with one of these when I was young and jumped at the chance to pick one up for $180. The FT-7 is totally analog, no digital anything, and they have a good reputation for a nice sounding receiver.   This is not a "B" so it's 10W out but that's fine for me. The case has a few "dings" and there are some holes presumably for adjusting things, but inside it's clean.  

Peter Markshttps://profiles.google.com/113638291068850161611noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-87514744297200501482011-08-11T03:06:00.001-07:002011-08-23T22:02:26.416-07:00

Had a blood test today at a small place and they had this nifty desktop centrifuge:     It's used to force the blood cells to the bottom of the tube, where there is some sort of transparent gel that holds them in place. Entertained me anyhow.

Peter Markshttps://profiles.google.com/113638291068850161611noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-49242414184951009212011-08-09T03:28:00.001-07:002011-08-09T03:42:54.889-07:00

In recent weeks we've greatly enjoyed the "Wonders of the universe" program with Professor Brian Cox. The filming has some annoying aspects: the sun is often in shot, presumably to remind us of this close star, but it is rather glarey. There's lots of faux bad lens photography with blurred edge images and bogus lens flare. Brian gets about, and is sometimes in remote locations for very little

Peter Markshttps://profiles.google.com/113638291068850161611noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-85844005532044942522011-08-08T02:10:00.001-07:002011-08-22T23:21:13.877-07:00

It works rather well as you might expect. I just spotted this video by Dallas VK3EB where he visits the Shepparton RA transmission site during an outage for maintenance and couples a receiver to the feed line.     Great stuff, pity it wasn't used for a QRP contact too. Dallas is a great video producer, here's another one on measuring signal strength measurements with his Pegelmesser RF level

Peter Markshttps://profiles.google.com/113638291068850161611noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-11106508184855672042011-08-05T02:03:00.001-07:002011-08-06T04:41:21.181-07:00

At the urging of old mate Ross, VK1UN, I've run a wire loop antenna right around the suburban block we live on and I've just had a contact on 160m. I bought a roll of 100m of figure 8 electrical flex:It runs at fence height on three sides of the block (well short of 160m in length though):But at the back I run it up a tall tree:It's not quite long enough for a full wave on 160, so it turns out to

Peter Markshttps://profiles.google.com/113638291068850161611noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-68918536122244203612011-08-01T01:44:00.001-07:002011-08-01T02:01:05.600-07:00

The cheap Fuji 3D camera has been lots of fun but viewing the pictures is a challenge. I ordered some Red/blue specs on ebay and have been figuring out how to automate conversion of the MPO files from the camera through to good quality anaglyph images. (If you have red/blue glasses this will look good, believe me). The code is pillaged from a couple of places including here where it is mangled

Peter Markshttps://profiles.google.com/113638291068850161611noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-69655238739422118952011-07-31T03:28:00.001-07:002011-08-10T03:47:20.652-07:00

Today was a meeting of the Amateur Radio NSW Home Brew and Experimenter's group at Dural. The topic was duplexers, diplexers and filters. I shot some video which begins with some footage of the VK2WI broadcast. Thanks to everyone who presented. Sorry about the hand-held video but this time I'm using a wireless mic for the first time so audio is much more intelligible.The video has been tweaked

Peter Markshttps://profiles.google.com/113638291068850161611noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-75176463583024131372011-07-29T00:30:00.001-07:002011-07-29T00:32:38.417-07:00

When I was young I used to buy lots of records. When CDs appeared I bought them all again! In recent years the CD collection has gathered dust and the only music that gets listened to is the stuff that's been moved on to computers and iPods. One of the great pleasures of having my music collection on computer is having it play random tracks and discovering wonderful tracks of unexpected albums.

Peter Markshttps://profiles.google.com/113638291068850161611noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-28690777753541264822011-07-20T01:50:00.001-07:002011-07-20T01:50:17.369-07:00

Tomorrow a new MacOS X version, called Lion, will be released by Apple.For the past two releases, mate Coops and I have formed a queue outside our favourite Mac store, Maccentric in Chatswood to be the first to purchase a copy.Manager Hendrick comes out and laughs at us but it's been fun. This year, alas, Lion will be released for electronic download only and worse - Maccentric in Chatswood has

Peter Markshttps://profiles.google.com/113638291068850161611noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-17274246140263052972011-07-17T21:41:00.001-07:002011-07-18T02:05:36.381-07:00

I have a long interest in 3D photography, and even a couple of old film cameras in the bottom drawer here.There is a digital 3D camera from Fuji that is basically two 10Mpx cameras in one body with a nifty lenticular LCD panel. These used to sell for over $500, which was a bit much for me, but today I noticed that Harvey Norman Balgowlah has them in the red spot discount bin for $128.It's a Fuji

Peter Markshttps://profiles.google.com/113638291068850161611noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-4688199300729574432011-07-17T17:06:00.001-07:002011-07-17T17:12:35.442-07:00

Ross, VK1UN, is in the country and so I fired up the WSPR station so we could see if it's practical to have a QSO between Sydney and Melbourne. 40m was pretty dead but 20m was alive on Sunday afternoon.I got a signal report from James, VK2JN, who lives near by and runs a packet radio email gateway. I've tried to get this going in the past using a physical packet modem without much luck but he

Peter Markshttps://profiles.google.com/113638291068850161611noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-59267906988164080722011-07-09T21:52:00.001-07:002011-07-09T21:54:23.230-07:00

It feels very cold here in Sydney at the moment. My workplace is sometimes overly hot which got me interested in measuring, and plotting, the temperature.My radio shack is cupboard size and has a small fan heater in it which very quickly warms the space. But just how quickly…A while back I built a PIC based thermometer that reads a Maxim 1-wire temperature sensor and sends the readings out a

Peter Markshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14551895567806844862noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-5081813673031896152011-07-09T01:15:00.000-07:002011-07-09T01:38:09.585-07:00

Armed with a bag of adapter plugs, clip leads, a multi-meter and a torch, I spent today running PA sound for a local community group's annual festival. All sorts of technical hilarity ensued. The day was a mix of speeches and musical performances ranging from solo voice, to stringed instruments with singers to dance groups. The music to accompany the performers was handed to me on CDR disks

Peter Markshttps://profiles.google.com/113638291068850161611noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-42013894901043439282011-06-19T01:21:00.001-07:002011-06-19T01:21:48.411-07:00

A busy ham radio day here at 'chez vk2tpm'. A few weeks back, when I'd built the "shambles" 80m transceiver, I emailed a very strong local station, Malcolm VK2BMS, asking to arrange a contact so I could get a signal report. Here's the transceiver (double side band tx, direct conversion receive):Malcolm replied to my email some months after I sent it - apparently his cat uses the computer,

Peter Markshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14551895567806844862noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-55501830488789526792011-06-12T23:16:00.001-07:002011-06-13T01:30:20.845-07:00

Back in February I ordered a low power SSB transceiver from MFJ, the MFJ-9440. In June it arrived!They have versions for 75m, 40m, 20m and 10m. For US$260, you get a simple transceiver that draws low current (100mA) on receive (attractive for long listening on battery power) and puts out about 5W on transmit. The design is by K1BQT, Fred Littlefield, and is well regarded.Construction is solid and

Peter Markshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14551895567806844862noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-81594194744209080222011-06-04T23:04:00.001-07:002011-06-05T01:58:30.761-07:00

I've just returned from a three week visit to Tibet and as a watcher of technology and society there was much to catch my eye. (Note the SLA battery).Tibet is now part of China and while it's still mostly a manual subsistence farming lifestyle for much of the population, the central government is investing heavily to drag it into a more modern way of life.Everywhere outside of large towns you can

Peter Markshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14551895567806844862noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-7458351251022684182011-06-04T18:43:00.001-07:002011-06-04T18:43:30.603-07:00

Sorry for the break in transmission, for the past three weeks I've been on the road from Lhasa, Tibet to Kathmandu, Nepal. Most of the time was in Tibet.I'll write soon about the technology seen on the trip but while it's fresh here's some notes on what tech I took and how effective it was.In general, my bag was too heavy, partially because of the wide range of temperatures (0 degree tent stays

Peter Markshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14551895567806844862noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-5789953535900569362011-05-08T21:52:00.001-07:002011-05-08T21:52:57.641-07:00

After some more work on the ARNSW Home Brew group 80m transceiver challenge it's working well enough for a contact with Patrick, VK2PN who's about 10km away in Manly.I had run out of NE602s and was using a TUF-1 mixer but some stock arrived in the mail and I've swapped out the balanced modulator to good effect.Thanks to VK2PN for giving feedback on my signal and generally being encouraging. The

Peter Markshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14551895567806844862noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-19198189777201983092011-05-06T18:08:00.001-07:002011-05-06T18:08:11.265-07:00

This week I went on the road south of Sydney and while in Bowral I tried portable operation on 80m. It didn't go too well and more work needs to be done on my portable antenna.Thanks to the chaps from the Manly Warringah Radio Society for trying to receive my weak signal and for providing reports.

Peter Markshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14551895567806844862noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-72067581183685364682011-05-06T00:39:00.001-07:002011-05-06T00:39:15.716-07:00

I've just returned from a visit to Canberra and while there took some time to see a few interesting things for a radio nerd such as me. The Australian War Memorial has a bit of home brew radio gear on display. Here's a transceiver with a nifty antenna tuner front right:Here's a receiver that is powered from an electric light socket:Old parliament house is amazingly accessible and aside from

Peter Markshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14551895567806844862noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-84914767882436761232011-04-29T22:39:00.001-07:002011-05-05T00:08:23.471-07:00

Stephen, VK2BLQ, mentioned a station he'd noticed on shortwave at 5050 kHz.When I started listening, the station was simply playing a short list of music with time calls. There was no station identification. Now I'm noticing some short spoken word segments some of which sound like they might be of a religious nature - sort of self help style. Others including "moneymaking moments, from the money

Peter Markshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14551895567806844862noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-50226060910775116842011-04-28T23:47:00.001-07:002011-04-28T23:48:35.821-07:00

After we built homebrew 80m receivers to listen to the WIA broadcast, the challenge has been extended to a transceiver using a 3.58MHz ceramic resonator. Mine is just starting to work:My thanks to Patrick, VK2PN who lives not far from me and agreed to have a contact and give me some feedback. I can hear him quite well on the direct conversion receiver but I think there's a problem with my audio

Peter Markshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14551895567806844862noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-62148833361948180402011-04-23T20:48:00.001-07:002011-04-23T20:48:12.889-07:00

I've just sold a nice, but in recent years un-used, short wave radio on ebay. My practice is to start at $1 which tends to garner a bunch of bids early on. The theory is that this makes other bidders pay attention and increase the chance of a bit of a bidding war.Here's a graph of the price bids vs time.The radio sold for $565 and $100 of that was in the last 60 seconds.I often see items with a

Peter Markshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14551895567806844862noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-15906699126469385442011-04-20T06:11:00.001-07:002011-04-20T15:38:28.820-07:00

A great lecture night at the Manly Warringah Radio Society, with the Queen looking on with a knowing smile (I bet she understands I/Q demodulators).Andrew Gilbett, VK2XAG, gave a presentation on his dissertation on using software defined radio for a repeater system including how this might be scaled up to a "repeater hotel" where a single SDR might implement multiple repeaters on different

Peter Markshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14551895567806844862noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-47336135903514917722011-04-16T01:53:00.001-07:002011-04-16T01:53:58.323-07:00

Despite steady rain there was a good turnout at Dural for the ARNSW AGM today.Proceedings were well run and efficient and we were honoured to have WIA president Michael Owen at the meeting.Michael talked about the current state of Amateur Radio and how the Foundation license has been successful in reversing the decline in numbers of hams. The decline has been seen in other countries more severely

Peter Markshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14551895567806844862noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-72425506079653349072011-04-11T22:57:00.001-07:002011-04-25T01:58:15.235-07:00

Shadow Communications Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, has been tasked by leader Tony Abbott to "demolish" the government's National Broadband Network. On ABC 24's "The Drum" on Monday he accused futurist Mark Pesce of drinking "the cool-aid" on the NBN, presumably a reference to Apple fans who line up to buy the next product without question because it's sure to be cool.Malcolm argues that there

Peter Markshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14551895567806844862noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-39235359628838488462011-04-10T22:02:00.001-07:002011-04-10T22:02:44.353-07:00

I'm enjoying some time off between jobs at the moment. When I get up in the morning, it's as if a mystical glow draws me to the shack.My electronics and radio room is very small - I have to slide in sideways to fit in the door. It's tucked behind the television in the lounge room.The first projects have been to route antenna coaxes from other parts of the house in through the ceiling of the shack

Peter Markshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14551895567806844862noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-23489738645016922682011-04-08T20:42:00.001-07:002011-04-08T23:39:23.240-07:00

My favourite operating system is MacOS X, my second favourite is Ubuntu Linux.MacOS X has been pretty stable in recent years and Ubuntu, which is clearly influenced by Apple's UI, has been getting dramatically better each year.The Gnome desktop does work rather like Microsoft Windows and with 11.04 it looks like the MacOS influence is now coming to the fore.The Unity desktop removes the bottom

Peter Markshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14551895567806844862noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-45516355708305802392011-04-07T00:36:00.001-07:002011-04-11T00:03:19.091-07:00

Tribute to BBC 648 kHz Orfordness - The Enthusiast's Version from Jonathan Marks on Vimeo.The budget cuts to the BBC are obvious on-air even from here. This video is an interview with an engineer at an amazing transmission site that was used for beaming radio into Europe from a salt marsh with very high power at an ex radar site.Is running co-ax up the mast, with the mast base grounded and the

Peter Markshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14551895567806844862noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-88455849307253460432011-04-06T19:02:00.001-07:002011-04-06T19:02:58.629-07:00

I have a few weeks off and last night I went to the social meeting of the local radio club, the Manly Warringah Radio Society.Since my last visit they've moved into an excellent new venue in a Guide hall that is currently not used. It's a great radio location with very low noise - I marvelled at the quiet on 20m and 80m compared to my home.VK2MB station equipment is securely stored in a nice

Peter Markshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14551895567806844862noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-41868745549720352942011-04-03T16:15:00.001-07:002011-04-03T16:15:06.058-07:00

I'm enthusiastic about the DAB+ digital radio system but the receivers still disappoint. Bad user interface, high power consumption and bugs (I'm looking at you Sangean...).This radio works pretty well, battery life is said to be ten hours, which is terrible compared to my old Sony pocket analog receiver, but good compared to any other DAB+ radio I've tried.Naturally the headphone cord is used as

Peter Markshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14551895567806844862noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-69489333699271497652011-04-02T23:32:00.001-07:002011-04-02T23:42:10.030-07:00

Just received a ZM-2 QRP antenna tuner of the Z-Match design that I ordered from Emtech. It seems able to match a random wire with ease on multiple bands. In the video below I threw about 10m of wire into a tree and was able to tune up on 20m, 40m and even 80m.Tuning is quite sharp and for transmit there is a built-in SWR bridge with an LED indicator that you tune to extinguish.It's a compact

Peter Markshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14551895567806844862noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-41224839860531625242011-03-27T03:12:00.001-07:002011-04-15T01:16:16.670-07:00

Today the ARNSW Home Brew & Experimenter's group got together at Dural to show and talk about our "challenge" receivers. Here's some edited highlights:Mark ran the broadcast transmitter exciter to provide a signal but it took us a while to realise that the 3.7MHz morse beacon transmitter was running and causing problems for some receivers.Peter, VK2EMUs receiver is constructed from modules:I've

Peter Markshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14551895567806844862noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-23390589490275124152011-03-25T19:12:00.001-07:002011-03-25T19:12:21.739-07:00

An old friend Debbie Richards ran as an independent in the State election so I offered to help.This morning I handed out "how to vote" leaflets for the independents at the local polling place here in the safe Liberal electorate of Wakehurst.There was a nice camaraderie among the how to vote volunteers. Greens, Christian Democrats, Labour and a gang of Liberals were in attendance. Voters fall into

Peter Markshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14551895567806844862noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-80619069811102943252011-03-23T19:23:00.001-07:002011-03-23T19:23:29.092-07:00

At Wynyard Station in Sydney yesterday I saw this ad on the platform: I think it's great to see the browser wars continuing with IE9 last week, Firefox 4 this week and news of a future Chrome browser that you can talk to.

Peter Markshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14551895567806844862noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-50074750237104644112011-03-19T22:10:00.001-07:002011-03-19T22:10:58.734-07:00

Encouraged by the success of the 80m DC receiver built in a CD ROM drive case, I spent some time re-packaging a previously built 80m DC transmitter into another case so they will work together as a matched pair.The transmitter has the job of antenna switching.I didn't do a very good job of arranging the boards but happily there's plenty of space.These bits have previously let me have a contact

Peter Markshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14551895567806844862noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-52165444547330079892011-03-15T01:56:00.001-07:002011-03-23T01:23:23.600-07:00

Here's a movie showing the wsprnet map for 40m for a full week. I thought it would be interesting to visually see how propagation changes as the earth turns. The lines are stations that can hear each other.To capture this I set up an old MacBook with the browser open at the map view. The page has a refresh time of 1200 seconds built in. MacOS has a command line screencapture utility so I created

Peter Markshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14551895567806844862noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-44254700259280503972011-03-04T22:43:00.001-08:002011-11-20T00:11:24.225-08:00

The current "challenge" project for the Home Brew Group is to build a direct conversion receiver for the 80m WIA sunday broadcast on 3595KHz SSB. While this is pretty trivial for many in the group it's appropriate for my level of construction and happily I have a working receiver which I'm listening to as I type. The box is a CDROM drive box with the guts ripped out and a simple aluminium

Peter Markshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14551895567806844862noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-79671606484707870682011-02-26T23:11:00.001-08:002011-02-27T11:51:58.479-08:00

One of the most exciting days of the year is the ham radio field day at the Wyong race course. Aside from the diminished parking, this year was a great show. The home brew group had a wonderful display as always.There was lots of excellent junk to pick through.Some amazing pieces of gear including this light wave communications system.The car boot sale area was full of interesting stuff

Peter Markshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14551895567806844862noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-40887707875835019992011-02-26T22:48:00.001-08:002011-03-04T23:04:03.632-08:00

After a satisfying lunch with ABC engineering folks on Friday, Matthew kindly drove Nigel and I out to Dural for a "behind the scenes" tour of the VK2WI site conducted by regular broadcaster Tim, VK2ZTM.The star attraction, for me, is the new solid state pulse duration modulation 160m AM transmitter that has been commissioned in the last few weeks and sounds excellent.If all else fails there is

Peter Markshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14551895567806844862noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-34886793105786830572011-02-02T18:20:00.001-08:002011-02-03T01:10:30.076-08:00

Great to see the ABC Emergency page promoting Radio Australia's short wave services. They say: "* TV and radio transmission interruptions are occurring. Reliable broadcasts are available on short wave radio: day 9710kHz, and night 6080kHz or listen live below."Having noted that, it's amazing how much Twitter is being used to gather breaking news from eye witnesses these days.Long live short wave

Peter Markshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14551895567806844862noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-46493302298804342982011-01-30T22:18:00.001-08:002011-01-30T22:18:48.998-08:00

My wife loves reading the paper. She likes books printed on paper. I'm enthusiastic about going totally digital for my reading and particularly I like the idea of being able to carry a huge library with me and have the ability to download or purchase any book that strikes my interest.This morning as we sat on the balcony, overlooking the sea, with the sea breeze in our hair, I realised that ebook

Peter Markshttps://profiles.google.com/113638291068850161611noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-18338176567234359382011-01-30T14:26:00.001-08:002011-01-30T14:26:20.413-08:00

I've had the smaller international Kindle for a few weeks now, most recently while on holiday. While the iPad is a wonderful reader, particularly for indoor use, there is definitely a place for the Kindle.The Kindle is lighter and thinner and, being an eInk display, just gets easier to read as the ambient light gets brighter. (Below is a view of the screen in direct sunlight).Wireless broadband

Peter Markshttps://profiles.google.com/113638291068850161611noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-63817897677849367672011-01-30T02:32:00.001-08:002011-01-30T02:32:30.954-08:00

Once again, we've combined an annual catch up with family and friends with the Mid North Coast Radio Expo at Coffs Harbour.It's a well organised event, $5 to get in and free cups of tea which are appreciated. There was some interesting second hand gear on sale.There was a very interesting demonstration of a Genesis Radio G80 Software defined radio.This year was definitely quieter than last year.

Peter Markshttps://profiles.google.com/113638291068850161611noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-91093026016059398272011-01-23T01:44:00.001-08:002011-01-23T01:45:26.927-08:00

I've just had the pleasure of a visit to Melbourne and another visit to the fine shack of Ralph, VK3ZZC.Like a Tardis, it's small on the outside but huge on the inside.Stocked with modern equipment, such as this HP frequency counter with a nixie tube display.Ralph has figured out how to weld aluminium and hopefully will describe the method on his web site soon.The only thing that needs further

Peter Markshttps://profiles.google.com/113638291068850161611noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-63538836020713349432011-01-21T00:01:00.001-08:002011-01-25T00:51:39.457-08:00

Over the past few days the shack has been in construction mode. The MKARS80 from Radio-Kits UK, is a QRP (5W) 80m SSB transceiver based on the BITX20 design (with switchable two-way gain stages so the crystal filter is shared between receive and transmit).This design includes a PIC microprocessor that serves as a frequency counter and provides "huff and puff" frequency stabilisation. As a bonus

Peter Markshttps://profiles.google.com/113638291068850161611noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-38771202690292515552011-01-08T20:50:00.001-08:002011-01-08T20:50:45.654-08:00

I've made these before but they're fun. My objective is to eventually make a direct conversion receiver for 40m that is small enough to fit inside an Altoids tin, including the 9V battery. As you can see, I'm a long way from that objective:This is the classic NE602 LM386 design from EMRFD except that I'm using a permeability tuned oscillator. I'm hunting for long brass machine screws (and the

Peter Markshttps://profiles.google.com/113638291068850161611noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-39089455349799619072011-01-07T23:59:00.001-08:002011-01-08T00:07:36.898-08:00

Although I rarely need a DVD/CD drive for my Air, from time to time it's still handy. Today I plunked down $99 to get the Air Superdrive. Works nicely but the really striking thing about it is that this product is at the peak of Jobsian minimalistic design.It's symmetrical, clean, and functional. They've left out the activity light, and the eject hole and the result is a piece of art. The only

Peter Markshttps://profiles.google.com/113638291068850161611noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-52628667099954727892011-01-06T01:47:00.001-08:002011-01-06T01:47:42.304-08:00

Enjoyed this evening's Sydney Python (SyPy) talk hosted by Google. The supplied food was particularly nice and even included marinated octopus:Richard Volpato talked on "Making R restfully enterprising with Django". Thanks Richard and thanks to Dylan for organising it.

Peter Markshttps://profiles.google.com/113638291068850161611noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-69793709912952825752011-01-01T15:46:00.001-08:002011-01-01T15:46:09.148-08:00

Saw "The King's Speech" yesterday and can highly recommend it to anyone interested in 1930's era broadcast radio studio and control room equipment.There are wonderful microphones, mixing equipment and switchroom gear presumably for an early BBC World Service. There's also a wonderful scene with an announcer preparing to speak, complete with gargling and throat spray action.Aside from this

Peter Markshttps://profiles.google.com/113638291068850161611noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-50936468686938961442011-01-01T13:27:00.001-08:002011-01-01T13:27:38.143-08:00

The Cent-A-Meter has an AC current sensor you clip over the mains wire coming in to your house, (there's a version with three sensors for three phase power). The sensor transmits data on 433.92MHz to a receiver in the house that displays how much power your house is using.Obviously I'd like to log the readings and display a graph of usage over a day and week. It's a well constructed device

Peter Markshttps://profiles.google.com/113638291068850161611noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-36529001981199799132010-12-31T22:02:00.001-08:002011-04-24T00:57:11.992-07:00

At $59.98 it's hard to resist the Dick Smith GH5930.As well as being a High Definition digital set top box with HDMI out, it has a USB host port on the front and can record to a USB key drive. The device has the electronic program guide broadcast from each station and you can select a program in that and it will record it.The user interface is pretty clunky but it does the job and works well for

Peter Markshttps://profiles.google.com/113638291068850161611noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-15369472245559587412010-12-31T18:23:00.001-08:002011-01-01T22:32:48.093-08:00

Many years ago Time Magazine purchased a site license for some Mac software I wrote. I was grateful and in return took out a five year subscription to the magazine. The weekly overview of what happened is a cycle I like, it tends to overcome the daily need for news reports to come up with a big story when perhaps there isn't anything.After a while though Time seemed tired and old so I let my

Peter Markshttps://profiles.google.com/113638291068850161611noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-59143962255964615372010-12-27T13:22:00.001-08:002010-12-27T13:22:59.367-08:00

We spent Xmas at Fisherman's Paradise (presumably AKA "Fish Hell") so I was keen to enjoy some ham radio reception without all the electrical noise of a big city.Here's my portable kit:It's hard to beat the Yaesu FT-817 for portable operation, all HF bands plus VHF and UHF, about 350mA on receive, built-in rechargeable batteries and lots of advanced features in there (if you can find them in the

Peter Markshttps://profiles.google.com/113638291068850161611noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-66916681645353905072010-12-21T02:05:00.001-08:002010-12-21T02:05:12.887-08:00

Eye tests are pretty cool these days. This week my eye test involved a photo being taken of my retinas and the guy got a nifty image which he was happy to email me.Those light dots at the top of the right image (my left eye) are due to age and are not currently a problem.At the end of the measurements I asked if I could have a copy of the test (so I could have a go at ordering much cheaper

Peter Markshttps://profiles.google.com/113638291068850161611noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-59774442478363242672010-12-19T19:37:00.001-08:002010-12-19T19:37:55.380-08:00

Old mate John Beeston was upgrading the radio gear on his yacht and kindly passed the old manual antenna tuner to me. It's a Wagner AX-200 Manual Antenna Tuning Unit clearly designed for matching to the back stay short vertical wire.This is a fantastic tuner for long (or not so long) wires. I threw up about 5m of random wire and laid down a short counterpoise and this gadget matches it on 40m

Peter Markshttps://profiles.google.com/113638291068850161611noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-47119090782364211902010-12-16T19:54:00.001-08:002010-12-16T19:54:56.496-08:00

It was nice to see Nick Hodge at the PHP Unconference and he gave out some nice 8GB USB sticks with the slogan "Windows+PHP Platform of choice" on them.Along with the gift was a scrap of paper with a url asking us to do a survey about Windows as a platform for PHP. One of the questions seems a little tilted to me:Good luck to them with this push but I think if they're going to charge for the

Peter Markshttps://profiles.google.com/113638291068850161611noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-10872241540275434332010-12-16T16:28:00.001-08:002010-12-16T16:28:27.081-08:00

I attended the Sydney PHP group's unconference last night held at Google. It's my first "unconference" although it's a pretty popular idea around the world.Basically, rather than having formal presentations scheduled for the conference, the attendees write topic ideas on sticky notes which are then stuck on a board in columns for the groups.We join the group with a topic of interest and while the

Peter Markshttps://profiles.google.com/113638291068850161611noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-32536669231174719642010-12-14T23:28:00.001-08:002010-12-14T23:28:02.799-08:00

I have an irrational desire to see MacOS running on alternative hardware. It's always disappointing but never the less I was boggled to read that it's now supported on VirtualBox 3.2 and later.Strictly speaking VirtualBox supports MacOS X Server which can be legally virtualised, but I created a VM, stuck in my Snow Leopard DVD and following just a few simple steps from here or here, now have a

Peter Markshttps://profiles.google.com/113638291068850161611noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-46551764417645781272010-12-14T23:05:00.001-08:002010-12-14T23:14:45.373-08:00

This morning on ABC Radio National Breakfast, now with the Chaser's Julian Morrow, I had a chat about some of the technology behind Wikileaks. You can listen here.Julian is hosting RN breakfast over summer and I'll be joining in each Wednesday to talk about tech.

Peter Markshttps://profiles.google.com/113638291068850161611noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-5959975246331191462010-12-08T11:29:00.001-08:002010-12-08T11:29:16.937-08:00

I wanted a low cost digital watch and a bit of research turned up fascinating information about an old favourite, the Casio F-91W which first appeared in 1991.It's a simple, readable, watch with a battery life of more than five years.The Wikipedia article reveals that this watch is reported to be favoured by those interested in building time bombs! Surely this is a testament to its reliability

Peter Markshttps://profiles.google.com/113638291068850161611noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-1112376331933297792010-11-30T00:05:00.000-08:002010-11-30T00:05:42.798-08:00

The last ARNSW Home Brew group meeting at Dural for the year and quite an entertaining one at that. Stephen VK2BLQ stole the show with the brilliant idea of using old CD drive housings to build home brew equipment in. Aluminium angle stock makes the ends perfectly. He's nicely built a CW transceiver. I'm kicking myself for throwing some of these out even in the last few weeks. John Hale gave an

Peter Markshttps://profiles.google.com/113638291068850161611noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-53491558924856003052010-11-29T01:38:00.000-08:002010-11-29T10:44:49.798-08:00

Sadly, it looks like wsprnet.org is down and has been for an hour or more at the time of writing.I notice that it has been struggling a bit lately, in particular since the WSPR story made the front page of QST.Hopefully it isn't too serious. I certainly miss it.UpdateIt's back up.

Peter Markshttps://profiles.google.com/113638291068850161611noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35901825.post-30506655093677508992010-11-27T21:53:00.001-08:002010-11-30T01:58:30.568-08:00

Just posting this for my own reference really. I find that spreadsheets don't really cope with lots of data to plot so gnuplot is the way to go, but it's a little hard to figure out.I want to plot Ross VK1UN's reception of my WSPR signal using the data on the site. Here's the output I want (pretty much).To get this, I go to the wsprnet.org site, run a report of my transmissions and vk1un's

Peter Markshttps://profiles.google.com/113638291068850161611noreply@blogger.com0