Neighbour with a valve fettish

I've discovered a local resident who loves old telephones and radios with valves. Over the weekend he called on 80m and I dropped in to see the latest gadgets.

A "coffin" radio:

Magic eye for tuning:

Spares:

Rob's an amazing chap, I very much enjoy my visits.

He's the only person I know who doesn't use the internet. I'm sure he was pleased to receive a printed phone book last week.

Damn you Sensis - stop the phone books

Once again, despite my repeated attempts to halt delivery, the phone books turned up again.

In 2007 I formally opted out through Sensis's call centre and then again through their web site. The books came again in 2008. The so called "Green Office" program is a sham.

We never use the printed phone book. It will go - still wrapped - into the paper re-cycling again.

Update: It's 2011 and I'm pleased to report that instead of receiving a phone book I just received a card saying that they had received my request not to get it.

They go on to say that my request will be honoured for three years and then they'll revert to delivering books again unless I let them know again.

So, good on you Sensis at last.

Amateur Radio NSW Trash & Treasure

AeroPress coffee press review

I love everything about coffee, the cafes, the smell, the buzz, the different equipment, and yes.. even the drink.

This week I purchased an Aerobie AeroPress coffee press from RedcliffeTech in Queensland. They posted it the next day and this morning I collected it from the post office.

The product promises to make the smoothest, richest, purest coffee in the fastest time.

Compared to a standard coffee press where a porous plunger pushes the coffee grounds down after they have transferred their flavour into the hot water, this system uses air pressure to force the water through the grounds, then through a fine paper filter and in to your cup.

The other important difference is that they urge you to use water that is just 80 degrees C rather than boiling and they go so far as to suggest sticking a thermometer into the kettle to know when to stop heating the water.

You get lots of parts with this gadget, including a redundant stirrer (I have a spoon already), a funnel for delivering the coffee grounds into the tube (again redundant), a coffee scoop, and a good number of thin paper filters.

The plunger part has a soft rubber-like end on it that makes an air-tight seal as you push it down. My guess is that this is the part that will wear out in the end. All parts are very solid and for the money I think it's good value.

Taste

The coffee is very smooth and there's much less bitterness than the same coffee plunged in a traditional plunger. I'm not sure how much of this is due to the lower temperature - I'll certainly try this with my old plunger too.

The instructions are designed for an American taste where they make a very strong brew compared to what I like, interestingly they advise against just adding more water to the press to make it weaker, rather they suggest adding extra water to the cup and this does seem to do the trick.

It's a bit more fiddly than a simple plunger and it's a little difficult to get the filter paper out for cleaning.

All in all I'm very happy with the AU$62.15 it cost (including delivery).

Update: a comment from the importer

Hi Peter,

Great blog post, I started to write a comment but decided to write directly to you instead. I didn't want to come across as if I was "correcting" you, especially as my first impressions were similar to yours.

I've been using my original AeroPress for 3.5 years now, 3 times a day on average. Like you I initially thought both the stirring paddle and funnel were unnecessary. However if you grind your own beans and pour directly into the mixing chamber you'll find that the funnel is perfect and very useful. Also the paddle is exactly the right length (and shape) to mix the coffee and water without accidentally hitting and tearing the paper filter. The square shape of the paddle ensures you get all of the coffee mixed in.

So far I have only replaced two or three plunger seals in 3.5 years, mine still works great. The part I do occasionally replace for customers is the basket that holds the filter. For some reason it seems to get thrown out accidentally from time to time?

One of the interesting things about the Aeropress is that it's a great platform to experiment with. It lends itself nicely to changing variables and methods. That's probably why it appeals to Geeks (like us) so much. There's a really interesting discussion on the Coffee Geek forum that you might find interesting:

http://coffeegeek.com/forums/coffee/machines/195166

It's a huge thread but there's lots of good information there.

When you clean your AeroPress you can just basically rinse it under the tap. The first step is to twist off the filter cap, you can easily peel off the paper filter now. After you eject the used grinds into the bin just use hot water to rinse everything off.

By the way, you can reuse the paper filters. They're quite strong and you can just rinse them off. I use a filter about six times before replacing it.

Also the AeroPress is available from thirty-some retail outlets in Australia.

www.aeropress.com.au/index.php?main_page=where_to_buy

I'm sure you'll continue to enjoy your AeroPress and I hope you do a follow up post after living with it for a while. If you ever have any questions just let me know.

Regards,

Curtis Arnold

RedcliffeTech

www.AeroPress.com.au

www.CoffeePress.com.au

- Thanks Curtis for writing in and being so informative.

Victorian fires aftermath

Visited friends in Melbourne last week and saw first hand the aftermath of the fires near Healesville. These folks stayed and successfully defended their mud brick house but they were somewhat traumatised by the experience.

The fire came right up to the house as you can see.



The flames were double the height of the trees as the front approached.

One, rather morbid, observation was that cars containing people who had died could be seen at a distance because they often had hand prints visible on the inside of the windscreen.

My friends were very prepared and we'd often talked about the fire plan. Next time I think they won't stay.

Improved antenna tower

My antenna support is pretty dodgy. It comprises a netball hoop stand on a balcony, a piece of TV tube U-bolted to that, and finally a long telescopic pool cleaner pole. The whole arrangement is rather loosely guyed.

Having said all that, it's stayed up for over a year and I get excellent reports for my signal on 80m.

It was time to get something more elegant and so I turned to the web to enquire about getting a mast installed at the peak of the roof.

Dave, VK3ASE, had recommended a Hills Teletower and a quick call to a friendly local installer Digitel and we are away.

Mark is friendly and efficient and quite understanding about my needs not including a TV antenna. Rather I have a pulley mounted just below the top guy ring on a 20 foot Hills Teletower with a loop of line through it so I can hoist my balun up without difficulty.

The whole project cost $605 which seems reasonable to me and reduces my anxiety on windy nights when I often listen for my current arrangement to fall down.

Mark admitted that he "had a bit of a chuckle" as he approached the house and saw my current system. I can recommend Digitel to hams in need of some extra height.

Over the weekend I'll de-commission the netball/pool pole and switch over to the new support. Now we just need some sun spots.

Update

I was going to wait for the weekend to switch my dipole over but couldn't sit still with the tower beckoning.

It's magnificent.



Had a bit of trouble getting everything on the right side of the guy wires but in the end it's up nice and high and is much more stable than the old arrangement.

80m seems quieter than before and much less RF gets into the shack which is always good. A wise investment I think.

Update 2

Had a contact this evening on the home brew net with VK2ZTM Tim and VK2EMU Peter. Both gave me excellent reports. I could barely hear Peter but I heard him say I was "booming in".

Tuning around, the band seems less noisy and I'm hearing lots of stations. Unfortunately my daughter reports that I'm getting in to the TV which I didn't before, might have to do some work on that.

DAB+ Digital radio so good it picks up the moon!

See the ABC web site for more. Also they have a page about digital radio.

Update

The broadcast has begun - a re-construction of the mission to the moon. Tune in to 206.325MHz and set your crystal set to 80kbps AAC.

What's the problem with Bluray player firmware?

Stuck in a Bluray disk today and was greeted with this:

I have had disks take a minute or more before loading the opening menu so I guess it's good that they give a warning.

Naturally, I went to the update site for new software but why does Sony only make update firmware as Windows .exe files? These images get burnt to a CD for the upgrade so surely an .ISO image would work for all platforms?

I've filled in their web site feedback form and will report back if I get a response.

A room without a view

First time I've experienced this, I stayed in a room in Melbourne with no external window.

It was nice, with kitchen and all (although it looked like no-one had ever cooked there).

There is a curtain and behind it a window but it looks out to a little space in a corridor.

The only drawback for me was that there was no AM radio reception in there.

Sailing day in Melbourne aboard Mark Twain

A little windy and cold but a great day. Shot on an iPhone.

On the road with a 3G dongle modem

Travelling at the moment and this time I've bought a USB wireless internet dongle from Telstra.

The network has good coverage but here in Melbourne I've found that sometimes the signal is good but data just doesn't seem to get through, same on my phone.

What lets it down, on the Mac anyhow, is the software. "Telstra Turbo Connection Manager" is an amateur attempt to wrap the modem's low level functions in a graphical interface. Topping up obviously uses SIMToolkit and is barely workable. It took me four attempts just to top up - kept timing out.

To create the network on the Mac is touch and go, sometimes it works but often it just gets confused. I think it remembers the index of the device it's using and several times it's tried to connect using the Bluetooth interface.

Right now, (very early morning), ping times are about 800ms, during the day it was over 2s.

Of course all this wouldn't be necessary if my iPhone still tethered..

Digital Radio in Sydney gets a signal boost

Last night I noticed that the ABC digital radio stations (transmitted by Broadcast Australia near Chatswood) had jumped up in strength. Clearly there was antenna work going on because the signal was going on and off during the evening.

This morning the signal is good, full bars with the antenna up and reasonably listenable with the antenna down.

One thing, you don't want to set your watch by the pips on digital radio, the delay between the analog and digital versions of the feed is about four seconds. Presumably some of this is the receiver's buffering for error correction. Perhaps the days of the time signal are coming to an end - after all there's a clock in the radio anyhow.

Lovely long weekend in the Blue Mountains

My dear wife organised a weekend away at a "bed and breakfast" at Blackheath in the Blue Mountains. My Internet addiction was suppressed to some extent by the fantastic views just down the road at Govett's Leap.

We did a few walks, looked a lots of "old wares" as they call them, and ate too much yummy hand made food.

Having my phone point out when new mail arrived was probably a bad idea but it did spare me of anxiety about the rest of the world.

Interestingly I turned iPhone tethering on and a few seconds later the option disappeared! Presumably new settings got pushed out by Telstra. Further investigation is required but this could have been very distressing if I was relying on it for a presentation or something.

Unable to read old, crummy, CDRs

This is scary. I remember, some years back, finding that old floppy disks I'd stored had become unreadable after a few years, but this is the first time I've seen it with optical disks.

This disk was burnt in October 1999. I've tried two CD readers and will try more, but so far this isn't looking good. The videos on this CD are irreplaceable, well the original might be somewhere on VHS cassette.

To be fair, these were budget Princo blanks, but the disk still looks good and it's been well stored.

Got the disk to mount in a laptop, but copying is not going well.

I'm going to keep uploading my valuable files to the cloud, it's safer than around here.

Anyone else finding they can't read their old optical disks? What is the lifespan of CDRs?

Hey Apple, what's with these huge minor updates?

Today there was a small update to iPhoto from Apple. Even though it was a small fix the download was over 100Mb!

Now, while I have a good internet connection, and the download didn't take too long, but it still costs me money:

But really, not so long ago, there were installers that could make a diff between a current version and the new version that just contains an efficient difference between the two.

How about getting back to those efficient days again?

Digital Radio launches in Sydney

Today is launch day and the number of stations my radio finds has jumped to 38.

Many of them are giving me errors here at the moment but at last the ABC is there.

My beloved ABC Radio National is there at 72kbps mono but it does sound better than most AM radios.

Here's the list of what my radio picks up on a full scan with a whip antenna in the kitchen.

702 ABC Sydney

ABC Classic FM

ABC Dig Music

ABC Jazz

ABC Country

ABC Grandstand

ABC News Radio

ABCRadioNational

ABC dig

DigitalRadioPlus

The Edge Digital

Koffee

Mix 106.5

Nova 969

NovaNation

Pink Radio

RADAR- Get On It

Radar Radio

SBS Digital One

SBS Digital Two

SBS Radio_1

SBS Radio_1+2h

SBS Radio_2

SBS Radio_2+2h

SBS Radio_3

SBS Radio_+2h

SBS Radio_4

SBS Radio_4+2h

SBS Radio_Extra

SKYSportsRadio1

SKYSportsRadio2

SM Super Digi

Triple M

triple j

VEGA 95.3

Vega 953

WSFM ClassicHits

2CH EASY 1170

2CH - Easy 1170

2DAY

2GB

2GB 873 AM

2SM

2UE

2UE News Talk

2UE News Talk.

3G Service 1

3G Service 2

3G Service 3

3G Service 4

3G Service 5

3G Service 6


So that's pretty impressive on launch day. I'm a fair way out of town and reception isn't good so there might be more that I'm missing.

Update

On the way in on the bus I spoke to David who wears a Broadcast Australia jacket. He mentioned that the ABC transmission is coming from a temporary antenna and that the proper one will be commissioned over the weekend.

Indeed as my bus passed the impressive Willoughby tower this morning, there against a stunning sky, I could make out workers way up the tower doing things. I'm hoping that the ABC will be a bit stronger once they switch to the proper antennas.

Radio with pictures

The ABC is playing with all sorts of ways of getting its content out on the net. One way is by making a video of people appearing on radio.


Thanks in particular to Roi Huberman for his production effort.

Subscribe to the abcradionational YouTube feed and they'll write you a lovely letter.

Best Python IDE for MacOS

I keep coming back to TextMate, not because it does anything intelligent with my python code but just because it's fast and simple. For some reason the speed of the text editor makes a big difference to usability.

For the past few years I've purchased Komodo IDE which has great features but the editor is infuriatingly sluggish, to the extent that often when I try to select some text it misses the beginning of my selection or fouls it up in some way. With every update I hope they'll have addressed this and I'm not alone in being frustrated by the editor.

It's time to look again at Eclipse and the news is good. The widgets (SWT) have been ported to Cocoa and this means that in the latest release, 1.5, no Carbon is required and I understand this means the future is bright for Mac users upgrading to Snow Leopard in August.

Starting with the "classic" download I then add update sources for PyDev, Subclipse for Subversion, and jseclipse for Javascript.

PyDev also supports Google App Engine projects which will be interesting to try out.

Eclipse "Galileo", version 3.5, looks really great and runs very snappily on my lovely new laptop.

BBEdit is my choice for manipulating large text files, TextMate quickly became a favourite and I look forward to what ever Allan Odgarrd is up to with version 2, but until then I'll live in Eclipse for a while.

It's a great time to be a developer working on the Mac platform.

LED lighting for the computer desk

A few years back we made the mistake of replacing the ugly track lights in the house with halogen lights in the ceilings.

These lights are inefficient, don't last long and punch holes in the ceiling causing air to leak to and from the roof space.

Friend Gerald is studying energy efficiency and got me inspired to look at improved lighting for home.

This morning I went out after minimal research and purchased six of these Cree LED star light modules and a 700mA constant current power unit that takes a 12V rail (which I have here on hand) and regulates the current for the lights.

I screwed them all to an aluminium bar which helps to dissipate some heat and of course wired them in series.

They are blindingly bright to look directly at, but overall probably put out as much light as a 40W incandescent bulb. This unpleasant dazzling effect is no doubt because they are such point sources compared to a bulb, they really need a diffuser.

Judging by how hard my 1A meter bashed I'm guessing it's pulling about 1.5 to 2A at 12V so that's up to 24W. Just guessing.

The arrangement I've constructed places them behind my computer screen pointing up to the ceiling.

Overall the effect is quite pleasant and provides light around the computer screen with no glare. Here's how the ceiling looks.



These LEDs cost $20 each, not cheap, the power regulator was $25. Looking at the specs now, I see that I'm driving these LEDs beyond their rated current so I guess their life will be short. The aluminium bar is getting hot.

My guess is that about 20 of these devices would provide reasonable illumination for a work desk.

Making beef jerky at home

A few of my more amusing workmates last week held a "jerky off" where they brought in home made beef jerky flavoured in different ways and we tasted them all.

I've tried to make jerky at home in the oven but it wasn't very successful and no doubt burnt a lot of electricity.

The secret is to get a food dehydrator. I paid $54 (plus $20 postage) for one on eBay and it arrived promptly.

It's a nifty device with a fan forced heater in the bottom that blows hot air up through the drying racks so that it exits via little vents in the lid.

Bought some beef stir fry strips, nothing special and a bottle of honey soy marinade and left the beef to marinate in the fridge over night.

In to the dehydrator first thing in the morning and six hours later we gobbled up excellent beef jerky. This thing will pay for itself after about ten batches I figure.

The only drawback is the mess to clean up afterwards. I think next time I'll put aluminium foil at the bottom of the dryer.

That dried marinade cooked on to the base is hard to remove.

Spurred on by this initial success, my daughter has now made dried apple:



and yummy dried banana:

Django 1.1 please finish it

For the past few months I've been re-writing a PHP application in Django.

The PHP application was built on a framework called CodeIgniter which looks very good shares many similarities with Django but the stuff that Django gives me "for free" is great. I personally prefer Python to PHP which helps of course.

As we move through UAT towards production I've been anxiously tracking the progress of version 1.1. Today the outstanding bug list is down to three. (And one seems pretty trivial).

The main feature I'm itching for is aggregate functions in the ORM, the other is the ability to do actions to multiple objects in admin - like delete multiple.

Yes, I could install the latest from Subversion but that's not a good thing for future support, mind you we all ran version 0.96 for ages.

Keep up the great work Django developers, and how about another podcast?

iPhone Tethering on Telstra

Can't believe I've lived without this until now.

I'm on Telstra and just as an experiment took the iPhone browser here and clicked the APN link for telstra.iph (which for me mistakenly reported it would use telstra.internet).

Went to Settings, General, Network and there is was.

Unplugged my desktop computer's ethernet cable, plugged the iPhone in via USB and a new network alert was shown.

On the Mac, all was smooth sailing.

Works great, seems very fast and low latency (under 130ms to ping Australian sites).

This is a fantastic feature and I can understand the carriers wanting to charge extra for it but how can they justify it? We pay for the data on the phone anyhow but for some reason they feel that if we use that data in one way we pay more than if we use it in another way. What possible justification can there be?

I'm not alone in this view.

Carriers - don't try to limit this! You'll make more money and be able to upgrade your networks if you step up and just meet this pent up demand.

Early indications are that if Apple really wants to block this re-configuration they are going to have to work very hard in the hacking arms race.

Having tried it, and thought about the use, a phone that tethers is infinitely superior to one that doesn't.

Great stuff Apple, I hope that all phones will follow suit.

Update

You can load settings with tether enabled for many carriers around the world, including Telstra here. You open this page on your phone by the way.

For our Tibetan readers...

We do a little podcasting around here. Just launched is a series designed to help Tibetans moving to Australia to learn some English. It's called Tibetans Talk English.

This new site is the companion to the previous series which helps English speakers learn a bit of Tibetan, called Talk Tibetan.

It was a surprise to me that there are hundreds of Tibetans living around Dee Why at Sydney's Northern Beaches.

The podcasts are constructed in GarageBand with fine audio editing in Sound Studio.

Update

The ABC's 360 documentary series had a wonderful show on Tibetans in Dee Why including co-presenter Dorgee.

Journalism changed tonight

I've been listening to Dave Winer and Jay Rosen talking about rebooting the news so I'm primed for this.

As I write it seems that the election in Iran is out of step with the will of the people but the story has come out, not in the traditional media, but via "process journalism", where the story evolves in real time rather than being presented as the full story at the end.

Despite the fact that the mobile phone network was either deliberately disabled to prevent SMSs or quite possibly overwhelmed, news is coming out on Twitter and YouTube.

The Daily Show's story on the New York Times last week was very timely. One thing the Times said was along the lines of "the Huffington post doesn't have international bureaux.." and yet tonight we see that they have the best coverage.

WWDC Keynote remote experience

I really tried to stay asleep - if you can do that, but my dreams were awash with images of tablets and new iPhone hardware with front facing video cameras for live conferencing.

Despite a cold night and having the cat on 3, I was fully awake at 4am and headed down to experience the keynote via the live blogs.

The best experience, for me, was gdgt. Very simple, elegant and a nice stream of quality information and high quality photos. The site these guys founded, Engadget, also did a good job but took the approach of posting a series of stories as soon as they were announced.

On the software side I am looking forward to updating to iPhone 3 and Snow Leopard, on the hardware side the most interesting thing for me is the 13 inch MacBook Pro but I'm still getting good service out of the original Air and will probably wait. Seven hours battery life is a whole new ball game for a laptop and they are right to say that if it lasts five years I'm unlikely to still be using it.

The experience of WWDC I really wanted was a live video stream. There was at least one, so I did get to hear live audio and poor video of the end part of the keynote.

I'd have to describe the announcements as solid but evolutionary rather than revolutionary. Perhaps they're holding back exciting new hardware for Steve's return at the end of the month?

Enjoying talks on ABC Fora

The ABC in Australia has a series of TV and radio spots that bring interesting public talks to the audience who couldn't be there. It has a rather unfriendly name of ABC Fora.

For a long time, I thought it was something to do with plants but over time I've, mostly accidentally, heard some fantastic talks from this program.

It's on TV on Sunday nights on ABC2 at 6pm and Thursdays at 5.35pm.

It's on Radio on Radio National on Wednesday at 6pm and Thursday at 3am.

Oddly, I think I've heard the 3am broadcast more than the others.

The best way to access this material is via the web here.

The podcast feed is here.

The whole project is a partnership with FORA.tv which has some great stuff.

I'm starting to find that broadcast media - TV and radio, is basically a way to find out about what's available on the Internet.

So, why do so many tech speakers begin sentences with "so"?

So, I've been listening to lots of excellent technical talks on the internet lately, Pycon 2009 and Google IO for example. Perhaps it's just me, but one weird trend stands out for me, very often speakers either begin their talk, begin a new paragraph, or begin an answer with the word So.

WikiAnswers even has an answer on this. Yes, it's not grammatical.

But why is it so common?

"So" suggests the speaker is continuing a previous train of thought. So is a conjunction that can be used to connect two clauses.

Perhaps it's a way for a slightly anxious speaker to launch into their talk with a feeling that they are already on a roll rather than starting from a cold start.

In any case, it's a redundant element at the start of a sentence, that seems to have crept into wide use. I hope it dies out.

The ability to access the content of fantastic conferences via the internet is extremely valuable. Being there is great but after a long flight can be very tiring.

I wish Apple would live stream WWDC so I could count the so's.

HDTV it's worth it: BBC Earth

We watch a lot of low definition video around here - and while content is king, it's great to see something both content rich and high definition.

For the first time, this evening, I watched the BBC Earth BluRay disk and it is really stunning.

5 years to make, 45 camera people, 2000 days in the field, 204 locations, 62 countries, every continent.

I have no idea how they did it or how the stabilised all the shots from the air but I can heartily recommend it.

Digital radio delayed in Sydney

According to the Digital Radio Plus website I notice that the launch in Sydney has slipped to June 10 "due to weather".

Having said that there are 17 channels showing up on my receiver although many are silent or just test recordings.

The station I'm most looking forward to is ABC Radio National. Here in Sydney we only get it on AM, while places like Coffs Harbour get it on FM, I'd love to get RN in high fidelity and if possible stereo.

Personally, I think stereo would be a great asset even on a primarily talk station, the guests could be arranged on the sound stage to good effect.

Unfortunately there are rumours about that not only will RN be mono but that the bit rate might be disappointing. Surely this can't be true?

Android CupUpdate 1.5 in Australia

I've been clicking settings, about, check for update every day or so and finally it's coming down. Very exciting. I had a brief play with a Google staff member's phone the other day, will report back in a couple of days.

I used the G1 for about a week after I got it but reverted back to the much smoother iPhone. It will be interesting to see what Cupcake is like.

More news as it comes to hand.

Google Wave

Wish me luck. I attempted to explain Google Wave to a general audience this morning. Not sure if I succeeded. Audio is here.