MatStace @MatStace@octodon.social
Hates labels, unless you're talking about servers, in which case, it must be labelled. Gadgets, geekery, and hamradio
Robin Hood, Robin Hood, riding through the glen / Robin Hood, Robin Hood, and his Not All Men. / They need to explain / Again and again / Not all men / Not all men / Not all men.
@filkerdave I've found it hard to get into HF due to home being a flat with a tiny balcony in the middle of London, with absurd levels of QRM (often S9+)
@Documentally Cheers, that's the perfect thing.
I managed to find one on ebay for £16 as well, which is much easier on the pocket than the £50 that Maplin want for it ;-)
I just checked my Strava activity graph for the last year.
The last three months look much better than the previous nine...
https://octodon.social/media/BTpXKr5XVLhmLmWg27I
(and apart from the money I've saved on the commute, that is a load of days when I've reduced my stress levels by not taking the tube)
Speaking of projects though, I need to find a mi-fi device with an on-board ethernet port, so hook up a non-wifi-enabled device.
Do such things even exist, or am I going to end up with one of those TP-Link nano router things and a 3G/LTE dongle?
I wonder if @Documentally knows of such a device?
As I utterly failed at my #hamradio goal for April (having an #amsat QSO) I am going to make that my May #amateurradio goal instead ;-)
Time to start checking for useful satellite passes. Which, of course, means that my attention turns to one of my project ideas of a satellite tracker/info display. Which is attention I should be putting into actually operating my radios and not procrastinating over new projects.
TIME ZONE FACT # 26/24
Most people assume that time zones span 24 hours (-12 to +12). But it's actually more!
There exist UTC+13 and UTC+14 time zones for several island groups in the Pacific, including Samoa, Fiji, and Tonga. During daylight savings, New Zealand is +13, meaning that for one hour a day in the summer, New Zealand is 2 days ahead of Baker Island (UTC-12), even though they are only about two degrees of longitude apart
If you use Chrome, Google can use a network protocol for tracking and ad delivery that can't be seen or blocked by extensions. TL;DR: You really shouldn't use a web browser made by an ad company.
"AdBlock Plus, uBlock Origin, and other extensions cannot block QUIC requests. Recommended best practice is to disable QUIC from the chrome://flags/ URL."
https://blog.brave.com/quic-in-the-wild-for-google-ad-advantage/
Catching up on the last couple of week's of @Documentally 's weekly email (go sign up, it's well worth it - http://documentally.com/newsletter/) and loving this NYT piece about London and Brexit https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/04/11/world/europe/uk-london-brexit.html?_r=1 https://octodon.social/media/BOk_8RulJenKNQ9GKVk
@filkerdave I've really struggled with the MP1 at my QTH, the noise floor in central London has to be seen to be believed, and I'm too lazy to have followed through with my plans of heading out on my bicycle.
I've also picked up an AlexLoop walkham now, and have managed to work out Russia on JT65 from my balcony.
Now that the weather is improving, I'm determined to make more effort to get out and actually use my radios though,
@filkerdave There's one over here /me waves...
(aka 2E0TPS when playing with radios)
@Documentally I try to avoid the tube every day ;-)
(My cycle commute from Whitechapel to Balham (7.5 miles) is quicker by bicycle, and less sweaty than the northern line, plus I get to play ham radio when I'm above ground too)
Having "just signed up" to a mostly random mastodon instance, I have since found another one which _may_ be more appropriate for me and my interests, but it seems a shame that I can't seem to view the local timeline to that instance without having to sign up for it first.
Today I discovered that when other #hamradio friends said that #aprs coverage in London is terrible, they were speaking the truth.
Apart from one position report which was received by my own igate when I started my cycle commute to work, no other packets were received by an igate at all, which is a shame.
I feel like I should be all profound for my first toot, but it's not going to happen, is it? I'm probably not even over 140 characters 😉
