2 Bit Hacker

So, I finally went and took the test to get my amateur radio license. I’m now have a technician class license, callsign KB1QYW.

Now I just need a radio so I can do something with the license.

I’m still primarily interested in doing APRS and other packet applications, so I’ve been looking at radios with built in TNCs. At the moment I’m mainly drooling over the Kenwood TM-D710A, which can do everything I want, and more, but runs about $600 new. Looks like an ideal mobile unit for what I want to do.

I’ve also been pointed toward the upcoming Yaesu VX8-R, which also appears to have a built-in TNC, but is a handheld, rather than a mobile. From what I’ve heard, it should be considerably cheaper than the TM-D710A, but is overall less functional.

Either way I end up going, I’ve got some ideas for integrating a radio in my automobile with a PC. I’m thinking the car PC could pull in APRS data from the radio, OBD2 data from the car, GPS data, and perhaps video from a forward mounted camera. It should be pretty easy to rig up something to read the locations of other stations from the radio and insert them into a database for GPSDrive to read waypoints from, displaying them on a map along with my current position.

I’ve also been tossing around the idea of correlating position to fuel economy, creating a sort of fuel consumption heat map which could then be used to adjust my repetitive drives to more efficient routes. I don’t think this will be all that hard, just need to figure out how to get the current MPG number from the Prius, record it along with the current GPS coordinates, and then perhaps hack up Kismet’s gpsmap to plot that data instead of wireless access points (or in addition to.)

As far as hardware for the mobile PC, I’ve recently been looking at the IEI IBX-500A, which has enough serial ports for all the inputs I want, along with built-in 802.11 wireless. Not sure if the CPU would be fast enough for everything I want to do, but I think it’d work. I’ve also been looking at the VIA Artigo, which is a bit smaller, and a little faster, but has a fan and no built-in wireless.

Not that I can afford to do any of this just yet, but it’s fun to think about…

Happy Independence Day!

Was playing around with my Canon SD870 last night, using the CHDK firmware to do long exposure images of the fireworks. Some of them turned out nicely, I think.

Not bad for having no idea what I’m doing anyway. See the rest of them in my gallery.

Not a lot going on at the moment, and I feel like typing, so it’s time for another general life update. Things are generally going pretty well, though there are a few annoyances at the moment, like the busted TV. My current plan is to get it repaired again and then sell it and buy something non-LG. There’s a Sony Bravia 40″ that’s not terribly unreasonable, but it’s a good chunk of change, so I’m not really sure what I’m going to do. I’ve got a stack of old electronics to sell off too. I should get on that and put the money toward the new set.

My birthday is coming up next week. Delia already got me my big present, a few months back, an Amazon Kindle e-reader, which I’ve been using almost continuously for my nightly reading. There’s nothing else I really want at the moment, but I’ve tagged a few things on my want list for good measure. Thinking about picking up Soul Calibur IV if I don’t get it otherwise.

I was also thinking of dragging Delia down to Easthampton, to go wandering around on Mount Tom. Haven’t been down there since I lived there with my mom when I was like 7. We’ll see how the weather goes.

Oh, and I finally got my home storage server/gateway up and running. Seems to be doing pretty well, though with 512MB it’s a little under powered in memory, but otherwise it’s doing the job nicely. Also picked up a Netflix Player, which is a pretty slick device. The movie selection on Netflix’s streaming service still isn’t that great, but they do have a pretty good selection of TV shows and documentaries, which is nice.

That’s about it for now, I guess. I’ll try and think of something interesting to write.

Okay, LG is going on my personal vendor blacklist, at least for LCD TVs. I bought this LG 37LB5D LCD television back in December to replace my Sony WEGA CRT, and initially I was very happy with it. Then it started having audio issues, which I worked around. Then it started having video issues, where the screen would blank out randomly. I called a repair place, and the guy came out and swapped in a new power supply and control board, and everything was happy once again.

And so it went till today. The audio issue just resurfaced. I’m sitting here watching History HD off my TiVo, with no audio. First it was quick cut outs, now it’s just totally silent.

I suspect it’s something with the HDMI audio decoder. My suspicion is that it overheated and did some permanent damage to itself. I should probably contact the repair guy again and find out if the replacement parts were also under warranty, as it’s probably going to take another set of replacements to make this thing work again.

At this point though, I’m tempted to chuck this one off the balcony and go buy a Sharp AQUOS. We’ve got three of those at work and they’re running great. I suppose this is what I get for trying to save a buck and going with the cheap brand.

Recently someone pointed out that the contents of my e-mail signature are getting somewhat outdated, which stuck an idea into my head to update it. For a while now I’ve been using the following:

Chip Marshall <chip@2bithacker.net>     http://weblog.2bithacker.net/
GCM/IT d+(-) s+:++ a26>? C++ UB++++$ P+++$ L- E--- W++ N@ o K- w O M+
V-- PS+ PE Y+ PGP++ t+@ R@ tv@ b++@ DI++++ D+(-) G++ e>++ h>++ r-- y?

That jumbled mess is a Geek Code, a somewhat out of date, condensed representation of me. Given that the guidelines of the Code haven’t been updated since 1996, I’ve started looking into alternatives.

The first one I came across was OmniCode, which offers a similar syntax and a greater flexibility. However, the actual guidelines don’t seem to be well thought-out and the resulting code takes up too much space.

My second finding was the Hacker Key, which is again inspired by the Geek Code, and provides a further condensced format with updated parameters. I created a key pretty quickly, and tried the following on for size:

Chip Marshall <chip@2bithacker.net>        http://weblog.2bithacker.net/
v4sw5PUhw4/5ln5pr5FOPck4ma4u6FLOw5Xm5l5Ui2e4t4/5ARWb7HKOen6a2Xs5IMr2g6CM

It’s a little wider, but only two lines overall, and conveys approx the same amount of information to someone who knows what they’re looking at. I thought it looked kindof odd though, so I shuffled the components around and added in my PGP key ID, resulting in:

Chip Marshall <chip@2bithacker.net>
v4sw5PUhw4/5ln5pr5FOPck4ma4u6FLOw5Xm5l5Ui2e4t4/5ARWb7HKOen6a2Xs5IMr2g6CM
http://weblog.2bithacker.net/                        PGP key ID 43C4819E

It’s still a little wider than I’d like, but I could trim out a parameter or two to bring it back down. Haven’t decided if I really like it overall though yet.

Maybe I just spend too much time on these sorts of things…

PS: Oooh, what if I put the Hacker Key under the URL/PGP key line?

Chip Marshall <chip@2bithacker.net>
http://weblog.2bithacker.net/                        PGP key ID 43C4819E
v4sw5PUhw4/5ln5pr5FOPck4ma4u6FLOw5Xm5l5Ui2e4t4/5ARWb7HKOen6a2Xs5IMr2g6CM

Hmm…

Been making a few changes on the website. Did the upgrade to WordPress 2.5, which seems to be working fine, though I’m not a big fan of the new admin interface. I also finally fixed the CSS for the text boxes on the sidebar in this theme, so they have the proper background and bottom decoration.

Some of you may have noticed that I switched to the CLI theme for a bit. I liked it, but decided to go back to Connections Reloaded. One of these days I’ll get around to writing my own theme…

Also, I added an Amazon box to the sidebar, the top item is what Amazon thinks you want to buy based on your purchase history and the content of my site supposedly. The bottom item is a link to the Kindle e-reader. If you want to buy a Kindle, please use the link over there, they give associates a huge cut of the purchase price on those.

It’s getting to be that time of the month again, when I start whining about how no one donates to the Hindenburg fund. Unfortunately, it’s gotten to the point where it looks like Jason and I are the only ones really using it, and it’s hard to justify the $90/mo to keep it operational.

So, I’m starting to think I need to start selling some services on the box in order to get a regular flow of money coming in. Cheap virtual web hosting seems to be the easiest to do, if I can find buyers who would rather go for my little locally hosted box over one of the larger services. $10/mo seems fair to me, and at that rate I only need to get 9 customers to cover the hosting costs. If I could even get 3 or 4 it would be a big help.

If anyone has ideas for other services, or would be interesting in hosting, let me know. I suppose I should do this in some sort of official fashion via 2 Bit Hacker Consulting.