brainwagon

Earlier this week, I snapped a couple of iPhone photos of the partial solar eclipse with my iPhone, through coworker Eric’s mighty spiffy little Questar, equipped with a filter. Despite the glare, I was shocked at how much detail was actually available, especially for sunspot group 2192, which has been busy kicking off solar flares […]

My hardware hacking friends have been all a-twitter (and all a-pick-your-favorite-social-platform) about recent actions by FTDI. In case one of my three or so regulars haven’t heard about this dust-up, here’s a brief synopsis. FTDI makes a series of chips which translate between USB and either RS232 serial or TTL level serial signals. These chips […]

Snapped with my iPhone, held to the eyepiece of a Questar equipped with a solar filter…

Okay, it’s mostly just a lark: sending your name aboard the first test flight of the Orion space vehicle (scheduled for Dec 4.) but it’s kind of fun.

Without further explanation: [sourcecode lang=”python”] #!/usr/bin/python from random import choice # ,, , # ‘ || || A Shakespearean insult generator # \\ \\/\\ _-_, \\ \\ || =||= # || || || ||_. || || || || # || || || ~ || || || || || # \\ \\ \\ ,-_- \\/\\ \\ […]

Thomas’ talk about the Minima at Pacificon has got me thinking about building one of my own. I actually have quite a few of the necessary parts in my junk box, but lacked a few things, so I made a quick list and sent a quick order off to Tayda. Tayda has really good prices […]

Pacificon is the local yearly hamfest, which took place at the Santa Clara Marriot this weekend. I couldn’t go for the entire weekend, but I decided that spending at least part of my Saturday amongst my fellow hams would be good fun, so I set my alarm to an annoyingly early time (for the weekend) […]