Digital Dinner

I see that Pacificon has organized a Digital Dinner this evening.

I suppose it will be a bit of this and a byte of that.

I'll get my coat...

cAPS Lock Anguish!

Several times a week I have been on the brink of writing this. It's time to get it off my chest. I curse whoever it was that decided to place the caps lock key to the left of the A on the keyboard. For what seems like one time in two when I go to type a letter "a" I hit caps lock instead (or as well.) I hAVE USually typed several more letters before I realize my mistake and have to bACKTRack, to the accompaniment of loud cursing.

A couple of decades ago, in the days of MS-DOS, it was possible to write a little program called a TSR (from Terminate and Stay Resident.) This program could intercept your keystrokes and convert them to anything you liked. I wrote one that trapped Shift+3 and turned it into the pound sign instead of the US default hash (#). Microsoft provided a utility called KEYB.COM that could do this but it occupied several K of memory and in those days you counted every byte.

I don't know if that is possible in Windows. But I'd really love a program that could intercept the caps lock key and turn it into an A (or rather, an a) unless you gave it a long press!

The fault that wasn't

I thought my Baofeng UV-3R+ had developed a fault today. Whenever I changed channel the rig went into transmit.

Eventually I realized that the VOX was turned on. The clicks from the rotary channel knob were triggering it! Doh! I think I'm getting too dumb for this game.

Spot the mistake

Flash in the pan

I'm not exactly a fan of Flash in websites but I think you'll agree that that this example from the home page of the Dutch store HEMA is very amusing. When the page opens, don't click on anything, just wait...

The End of the Internet

http://www.wwwdotcom.com/

For those who don't believe that the internet is flat.

Deaf by design

I've never been a fan of Apple products. I have always felt that Apple was a brand aimed at fashionistas concerned more with style and the coolness associated with owning a particular product than with practicality. So for example phones were made with non user-replaceable batteries in order to make them very slim.

Now it appears Apple's engineers have made another slip-up in the name of style. Users of the new iPhone 4 are reporting that they lose the signal whenever they hold the phone. Apparently a section of the stainless steel band that runs around the phone is used as the antenna, and the part that radiates is on the lower left hand side - nicely surrounded by the fleshy palm of your hand if you hold the phone in your left hand.

It seems to be that Apple could do with a radio ham on its design team. Even the newest Foundation licensee - in fact even a CBer - could have told them that antennas are supposed to point upwards.

PLT DX Contest

For someone as plagued with HF band interference as me this sounds like a sick joke or an April 1 spoof that passed it's read-by date. The Electromagnetic Compatibility Industry Association (bet you didn't even know there was one) has announced a contest to see who can detect interference furthest from a power line adapter installation. Yes, really. There are two prizes: the Long Distance Award (LDX) for the person who detects interference the greatest distance from the installation, and the Most Typical prize (MTY) for the entrant whose detection distance is closest to the median value.

Well I suppose when interference blots out HF entirely we need to use our radios for something. I believe a CQ WW Wi-Fi contest in the offing. You collect SSIDs for multipliers. Double points if the network is unencrypted.

To all of us old-timers

This isn't original, though I've edited it a bit. It was sent to me as one of those chain emails, so my apologies if you have already seen it. But I thought it was so true, I just had to share it. I think everyone should read it.

To all who were born in the 1930s, '40s, '50s and 60s!

We were born to mothers who smoked or drank while they carried us and lived in houses full of asbestos. They took aspirin, ate blue cheese, raw egg products, bacon and processed meat, tuna from a can, and didn't get tested for diabetes or cervical cancer.

Our baby cots were covered with bright coloured lead-based paints. We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets. We rode in cars with no seat belts or air bags. We rode our bikes without helmets or shoes.

The shops closed at 5pm and didn't open on Sundays, but we didn't starve! Our only take away food was fish and chips - no pizza shops, Burger King or McDonald's. We ate crisps with salt in them, white bread with real butter, drank full cream milk and soft drinks with sugar in them, but we weren't overweight because we were always outside playing!

We rode bikes or walked to school and didn't get abducted. Our teachers would hit us with canes and gym shoes and bullies ruled the playground. It didn't harm us.

When we wanted our friends we would just walk or ride round there and yell for them. No one was able to reach us all day. We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on.

We collected old drink bottles and cashed them in at the corner store to buy toffees, gobstoppers, bubblegum and bangers to blow up frogs with. We would spend hours building go-karts out of old prams and then ride down the hill, only to find out we had no brakes. We built tree houses and dens and played in river beds with matchbox cars. We were given air guns and catapults for our birthdays. We fell out of trees, got cut and dirty, broke bones and teeth and there were no lawsuits from these accidents.

We did not have Playstations, Nintendo Wii, X-boxes, no video games at all, no 999 channels on satellite TV, no video/dvd movies, no mobile phones, no personal computers, no Internet, no Internet chat rooms. When we wanted to make friends we went outside and found them!

We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility and we learned how to deal with it. And you are one of them. Congratulations for surviving despite so many difficulties!

Mathod in the madness?

I have been browsing for information about various circuits recently. Two books that are often recommended are "Solid State Design for the Radio Amateur" (which is now quite old) and its successor "Experimental Methods in RF Design". I decided to get a copy of the latter and was gobsmacked to find on Amazon.co.uk that only used copies are available, priced from £557.14. No, that's not a misprint, it's about 800 bucks in real money.

I clicked over to Amazon.com and found the same book listed as available new for a slightly more reasonable (joke) $600.00, or I could buy a used one for a whisker under $500.00. Who are these sellers kidding? Do people really pay $600 for a book that was published by the ARRL in 2003 with a cover price of about $40? I wish I'd invested in a pile of them - they would have been a better return on my investment than my shareholdings (sick joke.)

I browsed down the Amazon.com page to see the usual stuff Amazon tells you about a book and found that 37% of people (rich or insane people, presumably) buy the item featured on the page, while 36% buy "Experimental Mathods (sic - not a joke) in RF Design" for a mere $42.70. That's 36% who can't spell, I guess, but I can live with a misprint in the title if it saves me $550.

But seriously, what's going on here? Is "Experimental Mathods" a pirate copy using a mis-spelt title to avoid copyright infringement? Is a joke being played on somebody? If I buy it will I receive something other than what I expected, like searching for "mammaries" instead of "memories" on Google? I'm off to confused.com.

Ham radio could prevent Alzheimer's

According to a BBC news report, scientists in Florida have produced some research that suggests mobile phone use could help protect against Alzheimer's disease. The experiment was conducted on mice, which raises some interesting questions such as what were mice doing using mobile phones and how can you tell whether a mouse has Alzheimer's anyway?

Joking aside, the studies showed that exposure to certain radio frequencies protected the cognitive ability of mice that had been genetically altered to develop beta-amyloid plaques, which are not something you hang on the wall but a marker of Alzheimer's disease, apparently. The scientists are now investigating different frequencies to see if they can get better results.

This research has interesting implications for us radio amateurs. For somebody such as myself whose memory is getting so bad I had to keep switching back to the article to remind myself what I was writing about, I can't wait for the results of the research to determine what is the most effective frequency. Perhaps I should bring the magnetic loop down from the attic and sit it on the desk beside me to get more benefit from the radiation. If it is really only GHz waves that have the benefits then perhaps I should invest in an Alinco DJ-G7. Though as nobody else round here works 23cm I'd end up talking to myself, which would result in other people thinking I'd got dementia.

Perhaps this news could result in neighbours being pleased at living next door to a radio amateur and actually encouraging them to put up bigger antennas and more power. Properties sited next to a radio mast might even see a rise in value. Well, it's nice to dream!

Gold plated

If you are in need of cheering up this morning, take a look at the product listing for this Wattgate 381 Audio Grade Duplex Socket, and scroll down to the reviews.

For the sake of your computer, do not have a mouth full of coffee when you start reading!

Who said geeks don't have a sense of humour?

Car Parks On The Air

As the instigator of the Wainwrights On The Air scheme I hope this does not come across as a case of the pot calling the kettle black, but I think the mania for "Things On The Air" is getting a bit out of hand.

Courtesy of Dan KB6NU's Blog I have just learned about Railroad Depots on the Air, a group whose aim is to set up radio stations at railroad depots and so that people can collect points by making contacts with them. Where will it all end? I suppose the road transport enthusiasts will set up a competing activity Bus Stations On The Air, if they haven't already.

I wonder if the people who dreamed up Islands On The Air knew what they were starting? Islands tend to be a long way away and expensive to get to, so Richard G3CWI came up with Summits On The Air (SOTA) which offered activators a large number of entities to activate without having to leave the country. Wainwrights On The Air is really just a local, junior SOTA. But both of those schemes have the disadvantage for the average ham unfit from too many hours slouched in front of the radio that you need to hike to the top of the mountain with your gear before you can activate it. So some awards for working easier to reach entities might be welcome.

Pubs On The Air would be extremely popular, especially with me. Certainly the lounge bar of the Bitter End in Cockermouth would make a more pleasant operating location than the top of Helvellyn in a hailstorm. But activators would be wise to get all the CW contacts over and done with at the start of the activation, with PSK31 reserved for just before closing time.

You could also have some programmes of a more topical nature. In Recession Victims On The Air you could earn points from contacting stations operating from closed-down Woolworths and MFI stores.

Car Parks On The Air would be the one for real couch-potato activators. All you would need to do is drive there, park up, turn on the mobile rig and start making contacts. You could even ask people wanting a paper QSL to make a donation to cover the cost of your Pay and Display ticket.

I'm sure you can think of plenty of others...