There's a terrific series of videos covering Australia's history in computing I noted in this post. After watching the episode on CSIRAC, I demanded that Ralph, VK3ZZC, join me in a visit to Spotswood to see it. (Click to enlarge).
The display is not well lit I'm afraid but Ralph was able to point out the features of it to me.
"Physicist and mathematician Trevor Pearcey and electrical/mechanical engineer Maston Beard led the design team for this computer, the first in Australia, and it was built by the CSIRO Division of Radiophysics. CSIRAC demonstrates how Australian designers, working largely in isolation, could successfully build one of the world's first computers. SIRAC ran its first program in 1949 and operated until 1964, performing computations for scientific, engineering and commercial projects.
It is now the only intact first generation computer."
The pumping station is also a wonderful thing to see.
Some images deserve to be black & white.
Also there is restoration work being done on the Melbourne Telescope in a wonderful workshop that I plan to use as a videoconference background in future.
ScienceWorks is a good thing to visit although it seems targeted at toddlers. I thought it would be difficult to get to but it's walking distance from Spotswood station which is very well connected.
Peter, VK3YE, has a very neat portable setup that includes a nicely beaten up FT817 and a pocket sized L-Match antenna tuner that seems to work very well for him. He described it on his site and in a video and there are many descriptions of this simple circuit. I built one for QRP use in a small plastic box.
My version allows the capacitance to be switched between the input and output. (Click to enlarge).
So far I've tested with a MiniVNA plugged in to my (currently half down) off centre fed dipole and it certainly changes the reactance wildly when adjusted.
The 10m, 28MHz, band seems rather lively today. I have just a low height wire dipole and am using an AirSpy HF+ but just look at all the visible activity:
(Click to enlarge).
I've often wondered what all those squiggly lines are. They usually, but not always, start and then sweep up in frequency. People have said either that they're high energy particles hitting the upper atmosphere or that they are distant welding machines that can be heard because of good propagation conditions.
It's wonderful to be able to see large parts of the spectrum like this.
I've just switched from a Kindle to a Kobo book reader. I have a collection of old MOBI format books that I wanted to bring over the the Kobo. It does read MOBI books but I see some weird erros like this:
I've found that converting to ePub in Calibre avoids these problems but I have a folder full of files to convert. Calibre has a command line tool called ebook-convert that can convert a file and seems to work well. Based on past work by others I've created this script to convert a directory of ebooks over to ePub in a directory named "converted".
#!/bin/bash
# bulk-convert
# based on https://github.com/captaincouch/lame-bulk-convert
# Set the $SAVEIFS variable as the global Internal Field Separator character.
# This preserves the original global $IFS variable to change it back later.
SAVEIFS=$IFS
# Set the $IFS variable to a space character using substitution escape sequence
# for the space character.
IFS=$(echo -en "\n\b")
# Create a new directory for the newly-converted files, if not already existing.
mkdir -p ./converted
# Loop and convert each file "i" to mp3. Quotation marks are used to account for
# spaces and illegal characters. The files are placed in ./converted-mp3/filename.mp3.
for i in $(ls)
do
# Set a variable "c" containing the filename with the ".ext" extension removed.
# For example, "sound.wav" would become "sound", and "sound.foo.wav" would
# become "sound.foo".
c="${i%.*}"
ebook-convert "$i" "./converted/$c.epub"
done
# Set the $IFS variable back to previous value, using the value stored in $SAVEIFS
# for safekeeping.
IFS=$SAVEIFS
My local library in Kyneton is part of the Goldfields Library Corporation and they have agreements with several eBook lending systems including BorrowBox and Libby. The Kindle does not support eBook borrowing - they want you to buy from their store.
Another thing the Kindle doesn't support is the Pocket read it later service. (There is some sort of workaround that uses the email to Kindle service).
I've purchased a Kobo Clara BW. (I have little interest in a lower contrast colour eInk device).
The Kobo is a bit smaller than the Kindle I have and the screen is set in from the face unlike the Kindle. It charges and connects with USB-C. Setup was quite easy, I gave it the Wifi credentials and it did a software update.
The first thing I tried was plugging it in to my Mac. It mounts as a disk. I copied over an old MOBI format book and it appeared in the library. MOBI is an old Kindle format that they still support but don't recommend. (I think the DRM has been well and truly cracked). Kobo supports a range of formats natively including ePub, PDF, FlePub, TXT, HTML, RTF and also MOBI.
The MOBI file I copied over works well enough on the Kobo but I noticed some visible formatting incantations in the text. Perhaps their MOBI implementation isn't complete?
I favour ePub and while you can put them on a Kindle you must email them to get them converted.
Setting up the Kobo to be able to browse and download loan eBooks from my library account was a bit of a puzzle. I went to the Discover tab and selected OverDrive (which is the way one accesses BorrowBox). It asked me to add my library. I tried Kyneton without luck, next I tried Goldfields. Finally I found a library in Ballarat and, guessing that it might be in the Goldfields group, chose that. Next I entered my library card number and PIN and it worked!
I am able to scroll through or search for books they have available. They do make it look like you need to purchase the book but tapping the three dot button shows an option to "Borrow with OverDrive". I sucessfully borrowed a book which quickly downloaded. It expires in 14 days.
The option to borrow rather than buy is well hidden. Dark pattern there from someone...
Pocket is a service from the FireFox folks where you click a button in your web browser while viewing a story you want to read later and it magically gets cleaned up and sent to your reader. On the Kobo, this is in the More tab and they call it "My Articles" (although the pocket logo is easily recognised.
I had a bit of trouble getting the autentication to work and the Kobo said at one point they were having trouble too and are working on it. I tried again and it went through.
After sending an article to Pocket on my desktop computer I found that I need to tell Pocket on the Kobo to "refresh" (in the ... menu) in order to get what's new. I do like the fact that Pocket documents are separate to books rather than being mingled as they were on the Kindle.
Borrowing eBooks from a library is rediculously confusing. Things have different names, authentication seems unreliable, and I doubt that normal library users would figure it out. Perhaps Libraries are not motivated to make it easy?
So far I like the Kobo. I notice a bug where it seems to think I'm just 1% through books in the main listing even though I'm much more than that. Long tap to show the dictionary definition of a word doesn't work with MOBI books so perhaps that's also why the MOBI book I'm reading doesn't show progress.
