@vk6flab@mastodon.radio
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vk6flab

@vk6flab@mastodon.radio

Anything and everything Amateur Radio and beyond. Heavily into Open Source and SDR, working on a multi band monitor and transmitter.

Excited to experiment with propagation and currently trying to discover just how little power is needed to get around, so far my 10 mW WSPR beacon has been received 13,945 km away on 10m.

Trialling new ways of learning #MorseCode with video: https://youtube.com/@vk6flab

#geek #nerd #hamradio VK6FLAB #podcaster #australia #ITProfessional #voiceover #opentowork

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M0CUV, to random
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I’m also unblocked on , now I’ve got the receiver’s Fast Fourier Transform working. Need to revisit the transmit side, to prepend the outgoing encoded data with a suitable Costas array. Then it’ll be on to the receiver’s detector and demodulator - which will be something of a “three pipe problem”.

vk6flab,
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@M0CUV what resources did you use to grok how this all hangs together, FFT, decimation, low pass filters, etc.

I feel like I've got the edge of what's involved, but I know that there's gaps in my understanding. I don't know how big the gaps are.

I've been writing software for 40 years, but this has not been part of my skillset and I'm keen to figure it out and learn.

Pointers and URLs welcome!

vk6flab,
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@M0CUV my current favourite resource is pysdr.org, but I have a love hate relationship with python, so it's hard going.

vk6flab,
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@M0CUV yeah. The C version I found was much easier on the eyes.

vk6flab,
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@M0CUV my dislike stems from starting with BASIC, 6502 assembly, followed by Modula-2 where I learnt the value of a stable interface.

Python keeps moving the goalposts, documentation is very poor for such a popular language, PHP does a better job for example, and now we have uncontrolled libraries being hacked and distributed.

I feel like it's the early days of Linux where you had to configure the kernel before you could build it for your machine.

1/

vk6flab,
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@M0CUV the fact that I have to upgrade code when the interpreter updates is just nuts. It's like they cannot even keep the language stable between minor version updates.

2/2

vk6flab,
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@M0CUV I've been using Docker precisely for that reason with a side helping of isolation.

Python doesn't get any easier, since the current flavour of the month is to use requirements.txt and expect to use pip to install it, which breaks a Debian install, so you use pipx which doesn't support libraries, so then you create a venv, so you can run pip anyway, but it won't update the $PATH, so you need to create a login shell.

Whilst the library is being updated in incompatible ways online.

M0CUV, to random
@M0CUV@mastodon.radio avatar

Quite a successful day operating FT8. Slightly marred when a Shannon denier arrived to tell me digital modes are “not real radio” ie not CW or Voice. I’d like to have seen him work Brazil, Australia and Turkey with QRP on 28MHz on the day after massive solar storms wiped out the short wave bands. Not impossible, but why restrict yourself to pre-1948 communications modes? I don’t get it. Unless it’s for historical re-enactment or to keep ancient equipment running. Or you just don’t like progress?

vk6flab,
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@M0CUV whenever I come across this phenomenon, I ask them about their spark gap set-up and how they deal with compliance...

vk6flab, to random
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Run out of valves to power up your grid dip meter, but have a lying around?

Next thing you know, your grid dip meter has a touchscreen:

https://hackaday.com/2024/04/03/a-nanovna-as-a-dip-meter/

mw1cgg, to random
@mw1cgg@mastodon.radio avatar

I have a funeral to go to on Thursday. Dude was a metalhead and most people going will also be from the scene. There's a request not to wear black.

FFS. That excludes pretty much everyone's wardrobe. Fuck knows what I can buy to wear. Hawaiian shirt? Jeans and a t-shirt seems a bit disrespectful.

vk6flab,
@vk6flab@mastodon.radio avatar

@mw1cgg I have been wearing bright colours as an adult since the funeral of my mate Wally VK6YS who became a silent key in 2016.

He had one wish, that we didn't wear black.

I bought my first Hawaiian shirt for his service.

Best. Decision. Ever.

M0CUV, to retrocomputing
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In other news, I have started the descent into by downloading Basilisk II in order to emulate a classic Macintosh SE/30. I looked briefly on eBay for a real one, but I doubt I could justify it - “what, MORE computers?!”

vk6flab,
@vk6flab@mastodon.radio avatar

@M0CUV I've booted that up a couple of times. It's scary how many memories it brings. Hypercard, MacPaint, the Finder, System 6, Clarus the Dogcow and plenty more..

vk6flab,
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@M0CUV it became so popular that Apple started charging for it, then spun it off with Clarus Software. (Clarus being the name of the Dogcow in the Print dialog box.)

vk6flab, to random
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https://www.positive.news/

vk6flab, to random
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Purely for curiosity purposes..

Until you researched the answer to reply with a witty response, did you know who or what "Adam Carolla" is and on which continent do you live?

vk6flab, to random
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Funniest thing I've seen in a long time.

A VM, running on my iMac is connected to the LAN. A raspberry pi is connected to WiFi. It has a USB keyboard connected to it.

Both machines are running USBip, the pi as a server. The VM as a client.

I just switched my workstation to the VM screen and noticed random characters in my console.

Turns out that Linux recognised the keyboard connected via USBip as a keyboard and loaded the drivers without any input from me.

I now have two keyboards.

vk6flab, to random
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Yet another technology in amateur radio I've never heard of:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DAPNET

vk6flab, to random
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Random internet searches are fun and sometimes educational. In this case a project to use LoRa to do AX.25 and TCP/IP.

I wonder if we could deploy this on 70cm, or on HF for some long hop pings ..

https://hackaday.io/project/165274-lora-ax25-ip-network

vk6flab,
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@M0CUV I'm fairly sure that Olivia and fldigi will give you an open source option.

M0CUV, to random
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OMG! All it took were about 5 different webpack loaders, and importing Semantic UI’s CSS using LESS, to work around its @import of Google’s web fonts. Also needed to expose jQuery first at the global level. Tch, bloody obvious really. :) :) Now I have about a hundred browser tabs open and should add helpful additional information to a handful of StackOverflow questions.

vk6flab,
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@M0CUV welcome to the wonderful world of "Yak Shaving"..

M0CUV, to random
@M0CUV@mastodon.radio avatar

So it turns out that webpack can read your CSS, and any that’s pulled in via npm dependencies (I’m using Semantic UI). It works out which CSS you’re using by reading your JS looking for where you import it. Ok so I’m importing CSS into JS now, kinda weird.. then webpack does some magic to let the JS embed the CSS.. and this barfs on Semantic UI because it has an @import url(<some Google font URL>). Apparently I need a webpack css loader… but I have that.

What a staggeringly complex system!

vk6flab,
@vk6flab@mastodon.radio avatar

@M0CUV I once sat down for a day and built a "hello world" in about a dozen different frameworks.

I used Docker to build, install and instantiate each one.

OMG

All I'll say is that I'd recommend that you have at least a TB of disk space free ..

I tend to write my projects without frameworks ..

vk6flab,
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@M0CUV the next challenge to discover is style sheet frameworks :)

There are a few extremely minimalist ones around that make for a much better developer experience ..

I couldn't find my notes on my phone, but here's one example: https://picocss.com/

vk6flab,
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@M0CUV also, just so I make myself clear, the CSS frameworks (I'm thinking of the Twitter monster one) are in my not so humble opinion absolutely hideous, but things like picocss are just beautiful, written to be understood.

web, to hamradio

@ve3qbz @bud_t @KD9ZHF @N0ZB @KC8CJ @Chris_N8PEM Okay. The wait is over. What does a potato and a morse key have to do with one another? I sat in the LICW Intro to Sending Class yesterday. One thing they taught us was how to adjust our straight key. Bob WO6W said a good starting point was to set the tension on the key to 100g. I was looking for something in the house that weighed 100 grams. My wife suggested a small potato. The potato in the photo weighed-in at 102 grams.

vk6flab,
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@ai6yr @web @ve3qbz @KD9ZHF @N0ZB @Chris_N8PEM says who?

M0CUV, to forth
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I know exactly what the problem is with eForth: I’m testing manually by poring over emulator execution traces; I’m not writing tests. I know the inner interpreter and some code words work, so I guess I’ll have to write a test framework out of that, and then test the effects of every other word until I’ve worked it all out.

vk6flab,
@vk6flab@mastodon.radio avatar

@M0CUV @serichards do you really need to go back to the dark ages of DOS? CP/M anyone?

Can you instead fire up Docker containers with different versions and compare notes?

vk6flab,
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@M0CUV @serichards with qemu libraries installed, you can run that inside an i386 Docker container.

vk6flab, to random
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@M0YNG random question which might already be a FAQ (which I looked for, but didn't discover):

After tapping the Mastodon search button (🔍), one of the tabs is called "Local" which is what I use to discover new and interesting content here.

I updated the official Mastodon app yesterday and now it's gone.

Did I do something wrong, did you remove it, did the app?

vk6flab,
@vk6flab@mastodon.radio avatar

@M0YNG @m0jdr @pachli

I have now installed Pachi and I have to say that it's absolutely changed my Mastodon experience for the better.

Thanks for the recommendation!

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