brainwagon

Okay, so here’s the deal: I’ve been working on my weather satellite decoder off and on for a few weeks, and been cleaning up the code, trying to make it simpler and better explained in preparation for eventual publication. I’m now at the point where I’m trying to do the whole “sync detection” part, so […]

Guy buys some cheap laser modules, scavenges parts from a couple of old scanners, and builds himself a laser stencil cutter. Uses Postscript to generate the cutting paths, an idea which Don Lancaster called a Flutterwumper. Laser cutter, start slicing stuff for under 50 dollars

G6LVB has a really nifty website, which includes plans for a neat little PIC powered antenna tracker. The writeup says that it used the “Plan 13” algorithm for G3RUH, which I had never heard of before. A little judicious Googling reveals: PLAN-13 Satellite Position Calculation Program This algorithm seems much simpler and more straightforward than […]

I got some time today waiting for the furnace guys to show up (they never did) and managed to figure out a few of the things that were wrong with the image normalization code and with the sync detection code. Here’s the latest automatically generated image from one of the recordings I made earlier. There […]

It’ll be apparent what’s going on halfway through the song.

Okay, I admit it. I have a special place in my heart for The Incredibles. It was my first opportunity to work for Brad Bird. I worked with a lot of really great people, many of whom I went on to work with again during Ratatouille, and let’s face it: I just love the whole […]

Not getting your daily geek on? Try the PDP-1 playing a Christmas Carol Medley. Via PDP-1 Music

I’m sitting up in bed, laptop buzzing away, with my wife sleeping next to me. Within the next hour, we’ll have showers taken, coffee brewing, and begin opening presents. I didn’t get the house cleaned as much as I would like and my wife’s Jeep still needs its wiper arm replaced (did they Loc-Tite the […]

Okay, I know I’m going overboard on this whole amateur radio kick I’ve been on, but with all the satellite stuff I’ve been dinking with, I couldn’t resist. NORAD tracks Santa.

Google Maps for mobile phones apparently has a new feature that enables you to automatically determine your position by triangulating your location from cell towers (much like the Navizon client does). This is very cool! Unfortunately, you can’t update the google maps application on the iphone, so I can’t tell how well it works. Are […]

While discussing my experiments with weather satellite reception, I talked about how I made my recordings using the “WFM” or wide FM settings on my Radio Shack Pro 60 scanner. If you read up on this subject, you’ll find that the signals transmitted by these satellites have about a 50khz bandwidth. The normal “narrow” FM […]

Here’s a nice, concise overview of how to setup a conventional packet station to transmit via the ISS or via PCSAT-1. I might do a similar page of my own that shows how to do this using just the Kenwood TH-D7A at some point, but until then, this is quite helpful. Basic Packet Setup for […]

Here is the Google satellite map of the area around the Occidental Grand Flamenco Xcaret where we stayed on our Mexico vacation. Toward the bottom is a man-made inlet with a small beach where you can actually snorkle amidst some kind ofneat fish. Just to the right of the inlet is a small ruin (pictures […]

While touring at Chichen Itza, your guide will undoubtedly ask you to clap your hands while standing on the broad field in front of the main step pyramid. What you hear is an odd chirping echo, caused (I’m guessing) by the many vertical steps which run up the side of the pyramid. Our guide explained […]

The blog has had no updates in the last week. The reason is simple: I was on vacation. Far away from the land of the Internet, email and cell phones. The wife and I decided to spend a week in Mexico, at the Occidental Grand Xcaret on the Mayan Riviera. While we were there, we […]