keep it short, keep me sweet

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Most of my radio communications use a text mode called PSK-31. It’s popular and survives a lot of interference, but fast it isn’t. I tested sending 1000 random characters, and it took 5′ 33″. That’s about this speed:

Because the mode is so slow, I prefer to keep my transmissions and macros short, stopping just shy of Morse’s telegraphically incomprehensible VY FB CPY OM. My heart sinks when I’m in a QSO, and I see the beginning of a huge piece of macro text being fired at me. A one-way long conversation (like the dude who sent the entire wikipedia article about his hometown) isn’t a ragchew, it’s a barrage. If someone started wittering on at you for 15 minutes without a chance for you to say anything, no-one would want to talk to them. So please, check your macros, think before you type, and we’ll have more and more pleasant contacts.

S100 things

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I think I like the S100. It’s small, fast, handles well, and has a bunch of goofy features (like lomofy, fisheye, pseudo-tilt-shift, ultravivid). It also has a semi-useful HDR mode, and best of all, a built in GPS for photo-tagging. This does kind of eat batteries, though, so I’ll have to remember to keep it turned off unless I need it.

fun trick noisemaker

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I just built my first Atari Punk Console, a simple LM556-based noisemaker beloved of the circuit-bending crowd (and pretty much avoided by everyone else). Jimmie P Rodgers sells a nice board (or kit), and I bought a few boards a while back, and only just built one up now.

The board’s a nicely finished little thing:

… and yes, it really only needs three resistors, three capacitors, and the 556, plus the control pots, power, speaker and all-important on/off button. The APC sounds a little like a drunken, flatulent bee banging around in a lager can, so you really want to be able to turn this thing off.

Jimmie designed this to fit in an Altoids tin, but Catherine had discarded a LUSH Massage Bar Tin which looked just about the right size. The tin is made of butter-soft aluminium, so it’s easy to start holes in it with the awl on my Dutch Army knife. It’s bigger than an Altoids tin, so you don’t have to fight to get things in. Lastly, the LUSH tin is nicely curved, and fits in your hands well.

Wit the lid closed, it looks like this:

And the sound? Well …

QRM Cat

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Was having a nice chat with Gary, WB0RUR, this morning on 40m PSK-31. His signal was clear, he’s a very experienced operator — yet he was jumping all over the waterfall with every transmission. I couldn’t understand why, but after his signal jumped, stopped, started, moved again, I caught a very brief TX: “… QRM … cat”

Gary explained:

“Sorry about that … he stepped on the keyboard and stopped my transmission and also bumped the VFO … so I’m probably moving all over frequency.”

QRM would be a great name for a cat.

archival, snarkival

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We live in a Scarborough neighbourhood, so that means that people use the side door. Front door’s for people who know no better. So we need a Side Door sign to guide the unschooled.

On the left is one I just printed. The one on the right — same printer (HP Photosmart C5180), same paper — has been taped to the glass on our front-facing screen door since December 2007, in full sunlight. It’s barely legible. (And yes, it has slightly different fonts/layout; the original was done on a PC in OpenOffice, the replacement in LibreOffice on a Mac.)

So whenever an inkjet crows about “Archival Inks!”, remember: four years to fade to white. Do you need your images to last longer?

The problem with Nook apps

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Compare and contrast:

B&N Nook App Store

 

Apple App Store

Same game, 404% more expensive on the Nook. No free demo versions from B&N, either, but they do want to sell you books. Maybe before completely spinning off the Nook brand, they should let us run Android properly on our capable little tablets. Hey, sure beats dying of dysentery …

Richard Harvey – A New Way of Seeing

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A New Way of Seeing was created by Richard Harvey for ICL for the launch of a new series of computers in 1979. Since it was only released to ICL dealers and their clients, it’s not widely known. This is a shame, as it’s a delicious slice of electro-prog.

So here it is: A New Way of Seeing – Richard Harvey (mp3).

Quality’s not great, ‘cos the audio’s ganked from this YouTube video. Seeing as ICL is long gone, this is probably the best we’ll have to live with.

mildly impressed by shazam (and soundhound)

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I’m a late adopter of Shazam, which is a semi-magic music recognition service. I just gave it a ten song shuffle from my collection.

Shazam matched:

  • LLL — Jesse Sykes & The Sweet Hereafter
  • Puppet Master — Marissa Nadler
  • He Woke Me Up Again — Sufjan Stevens
  • At The Bottom Of Everything — Bright Eyes
  • Derelict — Beck

Shazam found no match for:

Shazam was completely wrong about:

So: 50% hit rate, 50% miss — and one false positive. Adequate.

Karl recommended I try SoundHound. It matched:

  • LLL — Jesse Sykes & The Sweet Hereafter
  • He Woke Me Up Again — Sufjan Stevens
  • Religious Songs — Withered Hand
  • Caney Fork River — Old Man Luedecke
  • At The Bottom Of Everything — Bright Eyes
  • Derelict — Beck

Soundhound didn’t match:

  • Puppet Master — Marissa Nadler
  • Reuben — Rafe Stefanini
  • Appetite — Mount Eerie
  • Setting Forth — Flashman

So it knew about Withered Hand and Old Man Luedecke, but didn’t know about Marissa. About the same; maybe slightly better.

MetaFilter 2012-1 Music Swap

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It’s music swap time on MetaFilter. Here’s what I chose:

  • Mobius Smurf — Nichol Robertson
  • Unyoked Oxen Turn — Alasdair Roberts
  • Is She Fiona — The Gerbils
  • The Sloth — Flanders and Swann
  • Morphine — Clifton Hicks
  • Please Be Kind (demo) — Colleen and Paul
  • Running on Fumes — King Creosote & Jon Hopkins
  • Alcoholic Blues — Sheesham and Lotus
  • Four Horses — Ken Reaume
  • Hypernuit — Bertrand Belin
  • Ran So Hard The Sun Went Down — Otis Taylor
  • Freeing Song by Reindeer — The Music Tapes
  • Wrapped In Grey — XTC
  • Tengo La Voz — Bostich
  • Singing to the Earth (to thank Her for You) — Apollo Sunshine
  • Flop Eared Mule — Holy Modal Rounders
  • The Speed of Things — Robyn Hitchcock
  • Olivia — BGM
  • Yawns — Frightened Rabbit
  • No Cigarettes — Withered Hand
  • Ficelles — Ingrid St-Pierre

It’s here on Spotify: MeFi Swap 2012-1.

End of Movember

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Thanks to my donors, my stonkingly ill-advised facial hair raised over $1000 for men’s health and prostate cancer research at Movember.

before

after

Man, it feels strange to shave again. Especially on my chin, which hasn’t seen sunlight since around 2003.

last past th’ epost

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I’ve had a full billing cycle go through epost now, and would like to note that:

  • EFT direct payment — the kind I had to send through a void cheque — isn’t actually supported by any of the companies I use. It might be my bank being useless, but it’s a waste of time for me. I still have to faff with online banking for payments.
  • The “Record a Payment” feature appears to be designed for inline PDF viewing. It took me ages to find it on the bill page, since my PDF bills appear in Preview.
  • My second favourite utility, Bell Canada (the first being all the others), seems to want me to use their online One Bill service rather than epost. Bell Canada posts their bills on their internal system first, then on epost a few days later.