Robert Glasser - my 97.5 year old uncle, friend and radio amateur has died

Sad news that my 97+ year old uncle Robert Glasser, ex VK3QA & VK3DRG, has died after a fall at home. Robert was my first exposure to the ham radio hobby which has been a much loved part of my life. He had a tilt-over tower in the back yard (which he referred to as "my erection") with a beam for 20m when I was a child.

It's a credit to his kids, my cousins, Tracey and Paul, that Robert was able to stay at his home (with visiting carers) until just about the end. I know he appreciated that very much.

I would visit every few months when in Melbourne to catch up with friends and he was always excited to see me and hear about the evolution of ham radio technology. Once I dropped in on the way back from the Rosebud Radiofest and gave him a copy of the 1956 ARRL Handbook. He leafed through it and exclaimed "nothing's changed!". 

On another visit I brought along an IC-705 and showed him the waterfall display. He was impressed.

In later years he had a 2m radio but rarely was on air.

Robert, and his wife my dear aunt Peggy (who was an amazing person in her own right and the subject of this ABC program), were always kind and encouraging to me as a child and rather lost teenager. 

Farewell dear Robert. I will always remember you. Ex VK3QA & VK3DRG SK.

Tech Talk on ABC - with Cat Marks

Close readers of this blog will have noticed that I do a national radio talk about technology every fortnight but this week I was away on a hike. The program was looking around for someone to contribute the spot and went for my daughter Cat. 

It might be seen as nepotism except for the fact that she's much more qualified and certainly smarter than me. Here's her spot: 

The UK has just taken its first step into the Robotaxi era, with Wayve's self-driving cars now available to book through the Uber app; but there'll still be a licensed human driver in the front to take over if needed. 

Communications Minister Anika Wells has announced that the draft Digital Duty of Care law will be introduced into parliament this week, including a requirement that platforms offer the ability to 'opt-out' of their algorithms. What does this all mean?

Cat Marks, data scientist and Principal at Ember Advisors, joined Philip Clark and listeners to Nightlife with all the latest in tech news. Listen here: https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/nightlife/nightlife-tech-cat-marks/107131014

USB-C Power on Airbus

On the trip north to the recent walk I was lucky enough to fly on a couple of different recent Airbus planes in the Qantas fleet. The last one was an A220 which has this USB power port on the seat back:

Having bought, and tested, a few Chinese chargers, I'm a bit sceptical of the Watt claims on USB-C ports but I'm happy to report that Airbus is telling the truth. The macOS WhatCable tool is very handy.

Yep, 20V at 3A = 60W. Great stuff. 

The internet connection on the A220 tested at 18Mbps which is fine for general use. The plane I caught up to Sydney last week was a brand new Airbus A321-XLR and the internet speed was outstanding:

Malcolm Turnbul wouldn't need this speed but I thought it was great to see it.

Yuraygir coastal walk

I've just completed a beautiful 65km walk along the coast in Northern New South Wales.  The Yuraygir coastal walk started at Yamba and ended at Red Rock.

Along the way are stunning beaches, charming bush tracks, and a bit of rather challenging rock scrambles. To mix things up there's a couple of river crossings, two of which required boats to pick us up.

You really can't do this without support and in our case the trip was supported and guided by Marcus from Home Comforts Hiking. 

Walking south is certainly the best way to do it. We had the sun, and usually the wind at our backs.

I'd just left Drummond, Victoria, where it was 10C and I'd had the fire heating the house and arrived where it was 30C for much of the walk.

Happily I did not suffer from any blisters or other mishaps and felt faily fit probably due to my daily bush walks at home. Having said that, my feet were a bit sore at the end of each day but recovered by the morning.

Our guide Marcus did a wonderful job and the logistics all worked well bar a coffee shop that didn't open as advertised for breakfast one morning.

The walk is very well maintained by NSW Parks. We met a few of them along the way who were preparing for the visitors in the months ahead. 

There were frequent patches of no mobile coverage. I have an iPhone 17 Pro on Telstra and was pleased, for safety reasons, to see that it often showed "SAT" as the provider. When I tried to use data it shows this:

You can however send and receive iMessages. I tested this and they seemed to go through without delay.

Of course the high end iPhones also have satellite emergency contact which allows me to call for help in dire circumstances. I think these are fantastic features that help to justify the price of these phones.

The hike was a great experience and quite a contrast from my regular daily life in the cool bush by a warm radio.

Tech talk on ABC - Google preferred sources, the X algorithm, and cutting the price of hearing aids

Have you noticed those new "Make this a preferred source in Google" buttons appearing on news websites? What do they actually do? 

Could choosing your trusted news sources help support journalism in the age of AI summaries and algorithmic feeds? 

Also, a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences titled “Value misalignment of X’s feed algorithm” found, unsurprisingly, that the site’s algorithm prioritised engagement above all else when it generates a users “For You Page”.

What’s been revealed is that rather than simply showing more of what we agree with, the algorithm is deliberately mis-aligned in that it shows us things they know we don’t agree with so that we are prompted to comment on it, often angrily.

Finally, in the US, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulates hearing aids and last week they approved Samsung Galaxy Earbuds under a category of “over the counter” hearing aids.

This follows a similar decision in 2024 about Apple AirPods Pro. Having the two biggest manufacturers of smartphones able to sell hearing aids at a fraction of the price of prescription products: $400 rather than $4,000 is a major win for people with milder types of hearing loss.

You can listen here: https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/nightlife/nightlife-tech-talk-with-peter-marks/107077464 

Vale Hansen Yee

Beloved next door neighbour Hansen Yee aged just 82 has died.

Hansen was charming, modest and clearly intelligent. He was Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering at Sydney University. Aparrently a brilliant student. 

After his wife Cora died, he joined us for Xmas dinners and was a lovely part of our children's lives. He tutored daughter Cat in Maths. 

Vale Dr Hansen Yee BSc BE PhD, MIEEE.

CYD Ham Dashboard

The "Cheap Yellow Display" boards are a low cost board with an ESP32, a colour touch screen and a bunch of other useful I/O. I've long used them to display my solar stats (generating, using, net). I just noticed this excellent project HenrysCat esp32-cyd-ham-dashboard. There's an excellent web flash tool which works well.

It can roll through seven screens (you can turn some off if you wish). Here's a few:

The web flash tool shows this. I used the first option.

But my screen came up mirrored so I tried the second. In that case the screen was blank white so I went back to the first. When it boots up it creates a Wifi network with a captive portal. I found that the setting default to mirrored - which seems like a poor choice.

It's a great gadget to stick up in the shack. Great work to HenrysCat and claude. Source code here.

MacBook Air 11 - still great after all these years

I hand down my old laptops and phones to the kids who happily use them for years. Sometimes I try to hand down an update and are met with resistance - this (old) one still works fine, why should I change? When they do, they're stunned by the performance improvement. They are still going through the Intel to Apple Silicon transition.

Recently I got an 11-inch, Mid 2013, MacBook air back, and decided to get it going. The battery was completely dead. I paid $45 for a battery on AliExpress. They are easy to install on the 11 inch Airs and the battery came with the two screwdrivers needed.

There was quite a lot of dust and fluff to remove but the fan still moves well. My daughter got very good use out of this machine. It has a few dents in the edge but the screen is good and all the keys work. (I've done a lot of cleaning with a cotton bud but more to do). What's striking is that she's typed so much on it that the most used keycaps have worn the labels off them.

Even with "just" 4GB of RAM, the machine is surprisingly usable for email and web surfing. But being stuck on macOS 11 means that there are many apps that won't run and lots of sites complain about the version of Safari.

Some apps, like my beloved BBEdit, still keep old versions available.

I love the compact size of these and the fact that I could replace it for under $200 if the need arose means that this would be a good laptop to take somewhere where it might be stolen or damaged without too much anxiety.

Apple should make a new compact laptop. I love my modern Air but would be very attracted to something smaller for my messenger bag.

Pain points of running macOS 11

It's getting harder to operate on macOS 11. (Not as bad as macOS 10 which I initially installed - Safari's certificates have expired and it couldn't load any web site with https). Here are some notes on software versions that work:

• BBEdit 15.1.4 https://www.barebones.com/support/bbedit/updates.html#up151
• Obsidian 1.10.6 https://github.com/obsidianmd/obsidian-releases/releases#release-v1.10.6
• NetNewswire 5.0.4 https://netnewswire.com/old-versions.html
• Chrome 138 https://google-chrome.en.uptodown.com/mac/download/1095647884