Facebook, Twitter, My Space, etc.

Here is the inner dialogue of the 30 and unders, and their use of these internet applications:

“No! we refuse to accept any form of Government ID, no Voting checks, no tracking of our lives by Big Brother! We are a free generation who refuse to be nailed down, examined, or tracked! Freeeeeedom!”

“However, if you make it a cool social networking application, we’ll do that for you. And pay you for the privilege…”

Swiss Bank accounts

Tax cheats under fire

OK, the IRS is going after people with offshore accounts, some with balances in the millions. I am willing to bet that the IRS is not going to go after the many millions who “work off the books” in the inner cities and never report a dime of income. In fact, many take income (unemployment and welfare) as a consequence of not reporting. If you are serious about catching tax cheats, IRS, I’d submit that there is a much larger group out there that is holding back many billions in unpaid taxes.  Go after the tax cheats – I’m all for it – but lets go after everyone.

Pedophilia in the Homosexual World

Heard much about this disgusting freak, and what he did to this child?  Neither have I.  Wonder why…

Pedophilia in the Homosexual World.

Adventures in Macro – a Honey Bee

Honey Bee

NASA – New Solar Cycle Prediction

This is one of only a few solar cycles I’ll see in my lifetime, and as a Ham, it has an impact.  Even with sunspot activity at such a low, we still seem to have decent radio propagation across the world, and that is causing me to rethink the impact the solar cycle actually has on propagation.  It is certainly not all or nothing!

NASA – New Solar Cycle Prediction.

Italian Hams – the kings of pileup misbehavior

Having been on both sides of the DX, particularly when I was in XU, and now here in the UK, I have come to regard Italian Hams as the most poorly behaved in a pileup of any amateurs.  Oh, there are many who come close – the Eastern European hams make a play for the top, but no one seems to unseat the Italians.  I’m sorry, because I have QSO’d with, and like, many very gentlemanly Italian Hams, but many of their countrymen routinely, and without any sense of what they are doing, break pileup discipline.

For instance, tonight I listened to (and tried to work) a station in French Guiana.  No such luck, but there was an Italian Ham who called almost constantly, whether the DX was talking, or another Station was working the DX.  The DX had a good signal, and was highly copyable, so I know this guy heard him, but he continued to call almost incessantly.

I’ve seen this time and again, and in XU actually kept a list of Hams who disrupted pileup discipline so that I would never, ever, log a QSO with them.  I wish more Stations did that, because it really put the kibosh on this sort of behavior once it was known I was keeping a “naughty” list.  Especially on RTTY and CW.

Why this is so, I cannot say, and it’s a title I’m not sure the I stations want, but it’s there, and maybe by making some aware of it, we can turn this behavior off.

73.

TV on your PC

I know there are tons of sites out there, arrived at via many searches, that claim to let you watch Television on your PC.  Trust me, many are obscure, difficult, and have a limited selection.  I travel a lot, so having a way to look at the news while I’m on the road (and not in a foreign language or – God help me – CNN International) is a must.

I’ve found only three ways to do this that are consistent, and give me reasonable access to enough content, including Fox news:

TVU Player – www.tvunetworks.com  is a stand-alone player application that has a huge number of links to listener-streamed content.  TVU’s website also allows you to watch shows via a Java interface if you don’t want to use (or can’t) the windows player.

Blinko TV – www.blinkotv.com is another site that offers a web interface to several television networks.  It’s a startup, but has real potential, and seems very reliable.

TVPC – www.tvpc.com is another site like TVU that offers many channels, from all over the world, and is playable from the web browser.  There is a lot here, and most of the major U.S. networks are represented and consistently working.

Good luck, and hope one of these works for you.

Canon 40D – Fuzzy top of viewfinder

I’ve been noticing a distinct fuzziness at the top of my Canon 40D viewfinder these past few weeks.  This only seems to appear in the viewfinder, and not on my pictures, so I knew it was not the lens or the mirror.  I searched a lot, and using a lot of keywords, and finally found something that explained it.

Apparently, there is a sponge or spongelike adhesive strip that frames the viewfinder on the inside of the lens mount, and this has slipped downward a bit.  I can find nothing that describes how to fix this problem, but it is apparently innocuous.  I plan to take my 40D to a service center once I get back to the States, but, for now, I’ll live with it. 

If you found this post because you noticed the same thing, you are not alone.  If you have information as to how this might be corrected short of a trip to Canon, I’d love to hear it.

Church Politics: Why the Pope Is Sidestepping Notre Dame – TIME

Church Politics: Why the Pope Is Sidestepping Notre Dame – TIME.

Clearly the most offensive opening line of a story that I have read in a long time.  Ms. Sullivan obviously skipped the “subtlety and neutrality” class in Journalism school.

My latest Ham radio adventure – WSPR

People who know me know I love Amateur (Ham) Radio as a hobby.  I’ve been doing this for 33 years now, and it has not yet grown stale.  My latest adventure in Amateur Radio is something called WSPR, or Weak Signal Propagation Reporter.  This is a very interesting piece of software developed by Nobel Prize Winner in Physics, Joseph Taylor, who has the Amateur Radio Callsign K1JT.  Joe’s software, WSPR, uses special modulation techniques and sophisticated DSP algorithms to extract extremely weak signals, of very minimal bandwidth, from the noise.  I have been very excited to see what can be done with extremely low power on the radio.  I have used power as low as 10 mW (1/100 of a wat) to make contact from here in England with the East Coast of the U.S. 

I don’t know what it is about using very low power, called by hams QRPP, but I gotta tell you, it is really amazing to see just how far the power of a 9V battery can take your signal.  Below is a snapshot of the propagation map of my signal, at 1/2 watt, from a few minutes ago.  See the lines?  Those are telling me who heard me.  Besides other hams in Europe, you can see that I am making it to the American mid-west, as well as all the way out to Australia! 

73,

Rob

M0DUO / K2PI