It’s nice to see that Google is trying to do the same by establishing the Google Code University. Lots of good information available here.

Google Code University - Google Code

This website provides tutorials and sample course content so CS students and educators can learn more about current computing technologies and paradigms. In particular, this content is Creative Commons licensed which makes it easy for CS educators to use in their own classes.

The Courses section contains tutorials, lecture slides, and problem sets for a variety of topic areas:

• AJAX Programming
• Algorithms
• Distributed Systems
• Web Security
• Languages

It’s very strange. I can’t think of another hobby that spends as much time as we seem to in the following three activities:

1. Lamenting the impending doom of amateur radio, principally because so few newcomers enter the hobby, while simultaneously…
2. Grouching that all the newcomers in the hobby are wrecking the hobby because of their lack of desire to do things the way what we all learned, and yet
3. Spending all sorts of time trying to lure people into believing that our hobby is fun.

I prefer a different tactic.

If our hobby really was fun, we wouldn’t need to work at recruiting people: they would just happen naturally. We couldn’t keep them out of our hobby. If they don’t think amateur radio is fun, it’s probably best to assume that it’s not fun, at least for them. Something about the way we present ham radio to them makes them believe it isn’t fun. Many would argue that the man on the street just doesn’t understand what fun amateur radio is, but I would submit that the average ham doesn’t understand what fun is, or what the average young person would consider is fun.

Me? I just try to talk about the things which I think are fun, particularly things that can be done with minimal amounts of money and modest investment of time. I’ll leave the anxiety of the future of the hobby to others. I’d rather just keep plodding along, doing what I like, and trying to engage targets of opportunity who read about what I like as often as I can.

NASA - Pico-Satellite Solar Cell Experiment (PSSC)

Keyboard Acoustic Emanations Revisited

We examine the problem of keyboard acoustic emanations. We present a novel attack taking as input a 10-minute sound recording of a user typing English text using a keyboard, and then recovering up to 96% of typed characters. There is no need for a labeled training recording. Moreover the recognizer bootstrapped this way can even recognize random text such as passwords: In our experiments, 90% of 5-character random passwords using only letters can be generated in fewer than 20 attempts by an adversary; 80% of 10- character passwords can be generated in fewer than 75 attempts. Our attack uses the statistical constraints of the underlying content, English language, to reconstruct text from sound recordings without any labeled training data. The attack uses a combination of standard machine learning and speech recognition techniques, including cepstrum features, Hidden Markov Models, linear classification, and feedback-based incremental learning.

I am somewhat skeptical about the long term viability of 3D. People seem to be highly variable in their reaction to the 3D experience: some people seem to find it hard to perceive any 3D at all, others seem to get headaches with even the most mild experience. I’ve rated my own reaction to be somewhat in between: I’m not immune to the eye strain, but I usually can tolerate it for a reasonable amount of time.

So, here’s the good news: Bolt looks great! And it’s a pretty nice family story too! Bolt is a cute young dog who is adopted by Penny. What Bolt doesn’t know is that he’s a TV star: he thinks he’s a super hero protecting Penny from the evil Doctor Calico. When Penny is kidnapped in the cliffhanger episode for the season, Bolt inadvertently escapes, and embarks on a quest to save Penny from the Doctor’s evil clutches.

The story is cute, the characters are cute, the jokes are funny, the look is amazing, there are some great action sequences (especially the first one): all in all, I think it’s a pretty fun movie, and my family agreed. The audience in the theater I was in liked it a lot too: I heard laughter at frequent intervals, and spontaneous applause at the end of the film. See it in 2D if you must (or can’t stomach 3D), but see it! It’s just darned fun.

Obligatory disclaimer: I do work for Pixar Animation Studios, a division of Disney. I suppose if the film does well, it could have some positive affect on my salary, but I have a feeling you’d have more of an effect if you bought me coffee.

Addendum: Here’s a clip from Youtube.

ATMega Controller

Here’s hoping that wherever your Thanksgiving is, you and your love ones are healthy, and happy, and able to focus on the things which are good in your life. Best wishes!

Addendum: Here’s the NOAA-17 pass that just happpened out over the Pacicific. Max elevation was around 32 degrees, so it’s fairly short and noisy. Someday, I’ll have to get a proper WXSAT antenna and receiver.

Net result: I am KF6KYI no longer.

I am now:

It seems pretty good, except for one thing: it is pretty hard to see what we are staring at underneath all the cloud cover. The bulk of the west coast should appear to the right of the midline of each image, and I suspect the visible portion covers roughly 45 degrees north to 20 or so degrees north at the bottom, but other than that, it’s pretty hard to see any real detail. I have begun to plan my next revision of this program, which will record timing information as well, which will allow me to draw continent outlines over the map, which definitely will be helpful, particularly on the night time passes which use primarily IR imaging.

Addendum: With a bit of work, I can see the Great Salt Lake and Lake Tahoe. That, combined with my knowledge of the satellite orbit means that I can approximate the view with Google Earth:

It’s only a rough approximation, but it should be reasonably close.

Addendum: I was still bored while waiting for my wife to show up, so I went ahead and soldered together my K1EL keyer kit, pictured to the right. I only had one real problem: the instructions claim that when you insert the battery, you should hear the dit dah dit (R) through the small builtin speaker. I didn’t. I was confused. I checked the voltages between supply and ground. 3.2v, just as it should. The chip was getting power. I puzzled for a while, then suddenly realized there was a jumper that I needed to install to enable the small piezo speaker. Once I did that, all was well. Now, all I need is the proper cabling and a nice box (Altoids tin?) to mount it in, and I can use it with my new paddles.

Addendum²: Today I hacked a little 1/8″ stereo cable and wired it up to match the requirements of my FT-817ND. I’m a complete rookie at this Morse stuff, but I thought I’d record a quick little video to show how it works, using my Canon digital camera. The audio on this thing is a bit weak, but you can get the picture. I had to hold the key down with one hand because otherwise it tends to walk around a bit, I have a block of wood that I’ll eventually bolt it to.

YouTube - Simple Mandelbrot Movie

This is also the first time that I have tried to use the Youtube “annotation” functionality. Works pretty well. Wish I could overlay even a static, transparent image, similar to the YouTube logo that appears.

Grid Beam Building System

(Heard about it from The Citizen Scientist)

Addendum: Some of the experiments do require equipment which the absolute beginner might not have (like an oscilloscope, which I still lack), but the majority can probably be done with a decent voltmeter.

Main Page - Near Space

A novel microprocessor interface circuit is described which can alternately emit and detect light using only an LED, two digital I/O pins and a single current limiting resistor. This technique is first applied to create a smart illumination system that uses a single LED as both light source and sensor. We then present several devices that use an LED as a generic wireless serial data port. An important implication of this work is that every LED connected to a microprocessor can be thought of as a wireless two-way communication port. We present this technology as a solution to the “last centimeter problem'', because it permits disparate devices to communicate with each other simply and cheaply with minimal design modification.

MERL – TR2003-035 – Very Low-Cost Sensing and Communication Using Bidirectional LEDs.

Dear all,

we are looking for someone to assist us in commanding of our cubesat
COMPASS-1 at the West Coast.

If someone (or more) is interested in, please contact me. Thanks!

73, on behalf of the COMPASS team,

Mike
DK3WN

This was a simple, concise plea from help from the amateur committee. You’d think that we as amateurs would be eager to jump at the chance to help. After all, how many of us volunteer to help put up antennas, or fix equipment, or help one another to prepare for license exams, or even help with genuine emergencies, all without any kind of reward beyond our own feeling that we are doing something good.

Here’s one of the first responses that Mike’s plea received:

Hi Mike, DK3WN

COMPASS-1 is not an amateur satellite  http://www.raumfahrt.fh-aachen.de/

If the COMPASS team is looking for someone (or more) radioamateurs
all around the world in assisting with command and telemetry using our
amateur ground stations built  using our amateur money in my opinion the
COMPASS-1 scientific organization should donate contributions to AMSAT
in order to buid our communication satellites.

Is the COMPASS-1 scientific organization in Germany donating contributions
to AMSAT-DL to build P3-E or not ?

Tank you for you answere

73" de

i8CVS Domenico

First of all, as a matter of practicality, University cubesat programs such as COMPASS-1 are typically funded by grants. The grant money is typically given to perform a given piece of research, and in the case of cubesats, to build, launch and deploy a specific payload. The teams cannot simply give such money away to other programs, no matter how worthwhile or deserving, simply because you or I would like them to. It would be an improper use of their grant money. They simply don’t have that kind of discretion. Even if 100% of their team wanted to split their grant money with P3-E, they couldn’t.

Second of all, cubesat programs are by definition low budget projects. They are low mass, low power objects launched into low earth orbit by begging space on other platforms. A typical cubesat is a 4 inch cube that weighs a kilogram, and is launched into an orbit with an apogee of around 650km. By comparison, P3-E will have an orbital mass of 90kg in a HEO with an apogee of 44,000km. Domenico’s comments make it seem as if they have cash to spare: the reverse is actually the true. A typical cubesat program grant might pay for the satellite, but control stations are typically underfunded if they are funded at all. These cubesat programs are running on very tight budgets, which is one of the reasons why they sometimes seek the cooperation of radio amateurs to gather telemetry, or, in the case of COMPASS-1 to assist with ground control operations. Even if they did have cash to spare, and the discretion to donate it to P3-E, the cost of launching P3-E compared to launching a cubesat is so great that no meaningful fraction of the P3-E’s launch costs could ever be gained by extracting pennies from cubesat launches. We might as well just try funding the launch with bake sales.

Third, one might reasonably ask: why don’t university programs try to work with us to get our satellites launched? Why can’t we compete successfully for the kind of grant money that these cubesat programs tap into? The answer is similar to the answer above: because we don’t offer them anything of any real interest relative to the cost that we would incur to launch P3-E. The cost of launching every cube sat for the last 5 years will not come close to the cost of launching P3-E, and P3-E isn’t carrying any payload that granting agencies are interested in flying anyway.

So, at best Domenico’s criticism is pointless. They can’t do what they ask. Even if they could, it would be a pittance compared to the real costs of launching the satellite that he (and frankly I) would like to see launched.

But it goes well beyond just saying something that is pointless. Domenico is essentially asking for a quid-pro-quo of money in exchange for services. In the United States, all radio amateurs are governed by Part 97, and one of the fundamental principles of this set of regulations is that we are amateurs, and we are prohibited from providing communications for a pecuniary interest. Domenico’s suggestion is that we do precisely that: that we aren’t interested in helping unless they provide us with a financial incentive to do so. It’s a violation of regulations for us to behave this way.

But even more than that: it’s beneath our character as radio amateurs. We have the motto: “When all else fails, amateur radio works.” This isn’t just a statement of technology, it’s a commitment on our part as volunteers to help each other. It’s what we do, and not just when there are lives to be saved. Amateur radio works because generous, thoughtful people give of themselves to make the world a better place. Mike reached out to the ham community for help. Domenico asked for a five spot. That’s not what we are supposed to be about.

I must admit that I lost it when I read Domenico’s letter. I called him a jackass, and while I must admit that might be a bit too harsh, he certainly is acting like a jackass. Nothing he said will help the amateur radio service. It was a pointless, useless attempt to get money from a stone that has no money to give. I also think it was petty and not in the spirit of our service.

Some people disagree or claim that my criticism was uncalled for. They also seemed to use the excuse that Domenico is entitled to his opinion, and that means I should apologize. I wonder why none of them seemed to defend my own entitlement to my own opinion. It’s always easy to defend opinions that you agree with I suppose. But in any case, no apology will be forthcoming.

Mike offered some lucky radio amateurs the opportunity to serve science, to work with a team dedicated to building relationships radio amateurs, and to operate as the control station for an satellite on amateur frequencies. My own resources are too meager to be of any practical use to him, but I suspect he’ll find some with both the equipment and the desire to help.

Addendum: Here is a link to the IARU webpage which outlines the requirements that a satellite needs to go through in order to use amateur radio frequencies. The COMPASS-1 cubesat was coordinated and its use of amateur frequencies was authorized by the International Amateur Radio Union.

Addendum²: While scanning the list of downlink frequencies for cubesats to determine their potential for interference to birds with linear transponders, I came up with this list:

Satellite         No.    Uplink       Downlink     Beacon   Mode          Callsign
CO-66 (SEEDS-II)  32791     .         437.485      437.485  FM,CW,Talker  JQ1YGU
COMPASS-1         32787     .         437.405         .     1200bps AFSK  DP0COM
COMPASS-1         32787     .            .         437.275  CW            DP0COM
CUTE1.7+APDII     32785 1267.600      437.475         .     9600bps GMSK  JQ1YTC
CO-65  (APDII)    32785     .         437.475         .     1200bps AFSK  JQ1YTC
CO-65  (APDII)    32785     .            .         437.275  CW            JQ1YTC
PolySat CP4       31132     .         437.325      437.323  1200bps SSB   N6CP
CO-58 (XI-V)      28895     .            .         437.345  1200bps AFSK  JQ1YGW
CO-58 (XI-V)      28895     .            .         437.345  1200bps AFSK  JQ1YGW
CO-57 (XI-IV)     27848     .         437.490         .     1200bps AFSK  JQ1YCW
CO-57 (XI-IV)     27848     .            .         436.8475 CW
CO-56 (CUTE1.7)   28941     .         437.505      437.382  1200bps AFSK  JQ1YPC
CO-56 (CUTE1.7)   28941 1268.500      437.505      437.382  9600bps GMSK
CO-55 (CUTE-I)    27844     .         437.470         .     1200bps AFSK  JQ1YCY
CO-55 (CUTE-I)    27844     .            .         436.8375 CW

Frequencies cribbed from this link..

An astute observer will note that in virtually every case, these cubesats are using the top 1Mhz of the 435-438Mhz allocation that is internationally recognized as the satellite subband on 70cm. Currently no transponders operate in this section of the band. VO-52 has uplinks on 435.230-435.200. DO-64 has uplinks on 435.570-530. FO-29 has the downlink on 435.900-800. And AO-7? It’s not even in the subband, with an uplink on 432.125-175. The simple fact is that the chance for interference between cubesats and any existing or even forseeable launch is exceedingly low. I was going to run a calculation to demonstrate that even if their frequencies did overlap, the chances of them actually being in the passband of a linear bird was essentially zero, but given that they don’t overlap in frequency at all, the odds aren’t just essentially zero, but are in fact precisely zero.

khymos.org - blog and website dedicated to molecular gastronomy

Addendum: For all the crowing that was done last night about how miraculous it was that an African American was elected president and how far we have come, in California, widely hailed as one of the greatest state of free-thinking liberals, Measure 8 looks like it passed, writing an explicit ban against same-sex marriage into our state’s Constitution. As a married person with a partner of the opposite sex, I can’t imagine how denying George Takei his right to spend the rest of his life with Brad Altman defends my marriage from anything.

We have met the challenge of the future, and the challenge is us.

Try clicking on the image above for a closer look.

It’s a trivial program, and the Arduino is capable of much, much more. When I get home, I’ll solder together a simple keying circuit and try it out on my FT-817.

Addendum:

Here’s the code running while hooked to my FT-817.