brainwagon

On this past Saturday, April 14th, I was tuning around to see if I could pick up one of the stations which was activated to celebrate (is that the right word) the 100th anniversary of the Titanic disaster. I quickly found K3MGY in Baltimore, and recorded an hour of their operation on twenty meters. Not [...]

Last night I got home from a day spent with new-baby-relatives, and decided to power up the ham radio setup and see if I could snag any good QSOs via JT65. The bands weren’t really all that good for me, but heck: it’s JT65, and it always seems to present something. A few minutes later, [...]

Okay, nothing really more to say: fldigi now has WEFAX reception. I decided to try it out on transmissions from Norfolk, VA tonight. Not bad (although I think my own receiver works a bit better). Still, it’s nice to have them in one place. Now, all that fldigi needs is JT65A, and life would be [...]

I’ve been pretty interested in codes of all sort, both the cryptographic codes and the codes that are used to provide error detection and correction. While I’ve played around quite a bit with convolutional codes, I haven’t really every bothered to develop more than a cursory understanding of the Reed-Solomon error correcting codes which have [...]

Over the last week, I started playing around with JT65-HF. JT65-HF is a digital mode, which is good for only the most basic of information exchanges: grid square, signal levels, and perhaps a very short 73 message. But it’s got some cool features. It operates on low power, and can automatically log any callsigns you [...]

A few days ago, I mentioned that @notch, the creator of Minecraft, had a new idea for a space game that he was beginning to work on. One of the features of this game is that your spaceship would be controlled by a simulated computer that you could program. He released a preliminary specification for [...]

My boss is retiring, and as part of his downsizing made me an offer that I couldn’t refuse. I’m now the owner although have not yet taken delivery of) a vintage receiver: the Collins R-390A. Here’s a pic of it, in all it’s vintage glory: Here’s the thing: I’m mostly completely out of my element [...]

I follow @notch (author of the near legendary independent game Minecraft, where I have spent more than a few hours). I think Minecraft showed considerable creative thinking, and tapped into a need for a kind of gameplay that wasn’t well satisfied by other typical genre games. I’m following somewhat eagerly his postings about his new [...]