I just tried posting the series of parts to my /mag, they showed up in reverse order in the microblog? WTF?
Please, if there is some advantage to this microblog thing, I'd love to know what is, and also how to make a post in my own magazine that does not feature a link.
'Threads/Microblog/People/Magazines' is where simplicity goes sideways in this webapp. It is not obvious what those things are; the couple of guides I've found don't discuss this focal point of confusion.
Latest update from AJC is that the Fulton County Website briefly served a Trump charging document, featuring a Racketeering Charge, and 18 others. It was quickly removed, apparently posted by mistake.
So, I've been using mastodon a long time, several years in fact, and I never really understood all the folks complaining that it was too complicated; I mean, it was just always intuitive to me. Now maybe that's because I never really did the tweeter.
What I have done is a lot of reddit, and I gotta say, why the hell is this so complicated? :P
I'm only half kidding.
One thing that should always taken into consideration by software peeps is that when making a 'replacement' like this (dont tell me it's not a replacement for reddit, there's too much signal in the noise of this mag about 'reddit migration'), is that users that are relocating their operations will need extra handholding and assistance.
Unlike a lot of us, these peeps aren't casually learning how to do a new cool thing, they're typically perceiving some real and or imagined (Hey, both can cause a lot of stress and anxiety!), they're fleeing something, and trying to settle into a new, safer place; or so they hope.
I may sound like I'm 'asking for a friend', and I am, but that friend is me :D
Please, we need some kind of FAQ that says 'this is the reddit thing you want to do' and 'here's how to do it on kbin'. We need the next section to say, 'You can do these things on reddit, and not on kbin' and one more section in the FAQ that says 'These are cool things kbin does that reddit doesn't'.
A HUGE ask would be user style sheets to make it look and act more or less like reddit; really, as far as I can tell, there's only really a couple of big differences. Hell, it might suffice if we just had a FAQ that pointed out the substantive differences.
The biggest problem is, y'all just kinda 'sprung' the whole microblog/People/Threads on us; those single word descriptors are really only useful if you're 'in the know' already.
I've been posting off and on at kbin now for several months, hoping I'd eventually just soak it up; but it hasn't happened. I still keep screwing some things up here and there; just yesterday I was off to the races posting about some things, and managed to editorialize a title when I thought I was using post body to introduce the link. It's been sent to the ether, now.
I'm not in desperation about anything. I'm not a 'migrator' or refugee, or any of that. I do have a couple projects on reddit I'd like to bring here, I think this is the future of social media, and I think I will get a higher quality engagement here. I also have some projects already here that I'd like to get supercharged, and I can't really do stuff until I know the ropes..
So yeah, it would be great if the devs would drop some smooth pdfs or single page html or damn just if they'd 'own' a markdown document that could be loaded off any kbin page or something, that would be bad ass.
In the absence of that though (or something like it) what do y'all have out there, in userland?
Ok JS8Spotter is up and running, and when configured with the TCP parameters, says that TCP is active, and I can see some traffic on the waterfall, if that's what the two red rectangles are.
That said, no traffic is being analyzed in the background, that I can tell.
It could be said that we aren't really doing much with this right now, but exchanging heartbeats. That may be true, but in so doing, so many of us together are forming a network that is aware of it's health, in a manner of speaking.
While it may not have a capacity to heal itself, as such, proper analysis of the data gathered from the heartbeat exchange might yield such valuable information as which station(s) is/are currently the best to pass a message through, and which stations are presently best for holding a message for delivery.
The former would be characterized through analysis of current routes; one would filter for the smallest collection of that set of 'hearing/heard' stations that connect source and destination for such a message. Additionally, age information about the heartbeats can be leveraged to make informed decisions about the present reliability of a route or a station's probable status.
The latter would look at more historical data to find stations where the message recipient is most often heard.
Combined in real time, these two approaches to delivery could conceivably form a reliable station delivery mechanism in a situation where condx are highly dynamic and highly variable.
You don't even need an internet connection to get your clock right for JS8Call work. All you have to do is to look to the left of the digital output gain slider, select the 'Timing' tab, select the Number of Decode Cycles you'll use as a basis, and then click 'Start Automatic Time Drift'.
This will use the time in such frames as you're able to decode (the 'Number of Decode Cycles'), and will set your client time based on the time in the decoded packets.
It's pretty clever, and the more decode cycles you can give it as a reference, the better.
A BIG shoutout to @OH8STN, where ever you are. Cheers!
For those of us who grew up thinking that UNIX, in some (elusive) form, was the Holy Grail of operating systems, NextSTEP was where we wanted to live, work, and play, as soon as we knew about it.
In a small way, the internet was 'late' for me - most of these kinds of development weren't happening on the internet yet. This, in particular, was a Steve Jobs project, and was spoken of only in whispers and sometimes in a magazine interview. By the time I really knew anything about the technology, it was pretty much reliquary. This applied pretty much to all of the Unix world.
Like all the rest of it, Linux was a bit late getting to me as well, in that sense that I had just began to steel myself to the realization that I had missed the heyday of open architecture, multiuser operating systems, and would be saddled with some kind of M$ Windows for the rest of my life.
Of course, that's all highly subjective, and truth be told, I was just about as ready for Linux at that point as Linux was for me, and a million other screwball wingnuts like me -- our ship, as it were, had just landed, and was recruiting crew.
There are a few things from back then that were worth retaining from the museum depository. Some of those that have perhaps been easiest to keep in play and updated are window managers. Openlook is an oldie but a goodie, and modernized (OpenBox WM), it is more powerful than ever, and running with critical efficiency on the Raspberry Pi, where it makes it possible to use a Pi4x8GB like one might have used a workstation of yesteryear.
Now NextSTEP has been shown the love, and here it is. It should run on the Raspberry Pi as well, and given that the project has a Debian target, I'm willing to bet it will run just fine.
I'm less impressed with the other desktop presented in the article from The Register - I'm generally offended by most things that originated at Canonical.
It's pretty much the company founded by a couple of guys who saw Linux community as having an unfilled vacuum in the shape of Micro$oft, and then tried to fill it.
Meanwhile, down on the dragonfly ranch, the house music is thumping, the JS8call console is hot and nation wide, and that makes me feel pretty good about something...
I think it's probably a pretty good philosophy to find things to like about life when we can as we wade into the future, as it's probably going to get pretty fucked, pretty regular.
That being said....I think it is of note that on the two hottest days (on average, on earth) in recorded history, we also had the sun open up a giant hole and retch up a big blob of itself, which it then vomited in our direction at a few million miles per hour. We've been getting bathed in all that (and the various lateral effects) for the past few days.
That shit ain't helpin', J/S.
I'm thinking about getting it together and getting right with my treadmill, in case I gotta get mobile or something. Not that I couldn't now, but it wouldn't be pretty, and you never know just how long you got until you have to deal with/run from some sort of catastrophe.
I own four radios that I can pick up and use. The first one I bought was a Baofeng UVS9Plus. Then a uSDX 9 band transceiver (this one covers all the WARC bands), after that, a Xeigu X6100 and then a (tr)uSDX; a tiny little radio, most of who's weight (measured in grams) is a fairly plain and rugged 3D printed case; this is essentially a smaller, lighter uSDX, but covering only 5 bands. It would probably transmit in the milliwatt range with the backlight off and a couple of 'D' dry cells. For a few minutes, anyway. It's a tough little radio, and now that I have copied my configs from the uSDX over to it, it's a real champ too. It functions pretty much identically to the uSDX, now that I have the configs about 99% the same. There's some minor variations between the two, so I'll never get that last 1%.
The last radio I want to talk about, 'the big fancy one', is a Xeigu X6100. It cost 3 or 4 times what the uSDX did (around 185$US), and unless you are using it for SSB telephony, it isn't half the radio of the *SDX lot. They're just ten times as efficient, 1/10th the weight, and well, 1/3 the price. They all work really well, the Xeigu just eats the battery, and gets hot as hell if you keep it in the duty cycle.
Unfortunately the duty cycle is most actively engaged with SSB Telephony. This has not stopped me from getting SSB QSOs.
I'm in no hurry to get rid of it though; it's a good radio and has already served me well, if it does use a bit more power and weigh a half pound.
I've been getting some good success with my attic home brew dipole and either of the HF radios, even when the maps all say my bands closed or the MUF unsuited to operations. Kinda curious about how that map is generated and how reliable it is.
/USDX rambling
/more USDX rambling
These radios have a reputation for being crappy. What I have found is that they are selling them installed with fairly archeological versions of the uSDX firmware. Also, the settings are... bizarre. Once you configure the radio properly, it works very well.
Out of the box complaints? Just about everything. It's noisy. Bad noisy. It often wont complete a CW message transmission. CW tones pop beginning and end. It's too loud.
All of this can be adjusted with the proper settings, and turn it into something that works a lot less like a piece of crap.
Recall that the design of these radios was made by some pretty reputable hams, and in all the cases I've seen, the Chinese mass builders didn't stray very far from that design.
Here's how I have both my uSDX and my (tr)uSDX configured:
1.1 Volume +3 (I use an external speaker, and adjust volume from there)
1.2 mode: CW
1.3 Filter BW: 500
1.4 Band: 20m
1.5 Tune Rate: 1k
1.6 VFO Mode: A
1.7 RIT: Off
1.8 AGC: Fast (on the (tr)uSDX this can only be set on/off)
1.9 NR: 2 (noise reduction)
1.10 ATT 0db
1.11 ATT2 2
1.12 S-Meter: dBm
2.1 CW Decoder: on
2.2 CW Tone: 600
2.3 not used ?
2.4 SemiQSX: Off
2.5Keyer Speed: 15
2.6 Keyer Mode: straight
2.7 Keyer Swap: Off
2.8 Practice: Off
2.9Tone Vol: 12
3.1 VOX: Off
3.2 Noise Gate: 9
3.3 Drive: 5
4.1 CQ Interval: 60 (seconds)
4.2+ programable CQ mmessages slots
8.1 PA Bias Min: 35
8.2 PA Bias Max: 160
8.3 Ref Freq: 27000000
8.4: IQ Phase: 98
8.5 not used?
8.6 not used?
8.7 Quadrature Sampling: On
8.8 Light: On
I am not saying these are the best possible settings for these radios, just some settings that are a massive improvement on the defaults, If you have some improvements, do let me know!
Concerning this this thing with people refusing to do business with people who are 'gay':
YET AGAIN, SCOTUS IS ASKING/ANSWERING THE WRONG QUESTION.
The question isn't whether you should be able to refuse service to 'gays' or whatever -- the question should be whether you have the right to refuse service to anyone at all.
In fact, you do: to suggest otherwise would imply that you are not free to choose who you work for, and when. That you are a slave to your customer, or to your own business.
It doesn't have anything to do with 'gays'. It has everything to do with personal liberty.
If you don't want to work for someone, or someone doesn't want to work for you - everyone should be fine with that. Look at it this way, would you want to be forced to work for these assholes?
People who are saying they won't work for you 'because...reasons' are simply assholes, and here's a pro-tip, whether you identify as gay or straight or a fucking spayed martian demigod you don't want to do business with someone that you consider an asshole, or that considers you an asshole.
There are so many people who do want your business, no matter who you are, and when you engage those people, you and they form an instant mutual support community that is nothing but positive. Seek THOSE businesses out, and to hell with the others, they're not worth your time. That they missed the opportunity to increase their earnings through engaging you is their dilemma, not yours.
Don't fertilize the hate 💖 but if you're going to pick a hill to die on, sweet babeh jeebus, you can do so much better than this.
In the interest of full disclosure, I am not gay, neither do I have a problem doing business with gay people, but if you're an asshole, I will kick you to the curb, as they say, no matter what part of the sexual spectrum you have personally staked out.
I put 'gay' in quotes because I don't want a single person to think I'm using the word negatively; indeed, my point is, this is not about being gay or being a gay person refused service. Don't let them make their asinine behavior about you. Just get away from them.
This is about being forced to do business with someone with whom you do not wish to engage in business. and I'm not defending these jerks, I'm just trying to clue you in that you don't want to eat one of their damn cakes anyway, and I sure wouldn't want to eat or serve a cake I forced them to bake in court.
Come on y'all, this is common sense, why is this even a thing.
I GOTTA FUCKIN' SAY,
I feel like I've done some RADIO today, friendos...
...I've been looking at that hf.dxview.org map, thinking 'fuck you, map', and I started wondering where their data comes from. I'm still not sure.
But I do know, maybe it comes from *what tx I can get through the ehter to my spotters."
So today I said, Ham is not looking at a friggen map and giving up.
Ham is about drawing that map. Ham is about understanding that it takes all of us to draw the map, and if my radio is off, what good is it doing me or anyone else?
So I've been transmitting today, in spite of the impossible MUF described by the map, and in spite of being completely locked out of 20m, according to the map, and hopefully, even if it wasn't statistically significant, I contributed something to the global awareness of condx; because I'm all over that bitch.
Y'all know you know how to use it, I don't need to make a screenie.