Anything and everything Amateur Radio and beyond. Heavily into Open Source and SDR, working on a multi band monitor and transmitter.
#geek #nerd #hamradio VK6FLAB #podcaster #australia #ITProfessional #voiceover #opentowork
"Whoops, you weren't meant to see that yet.."
Wallpaper, yeah, there's a lot of that going around. The main feature discussed with the recent new release of apt discussed colour as the primary new feature. No mention of any actual substantive changes or reference to the impact on apt-get et al., or even a link to the detailed change log.
Ouch
Why do you care about votes?
What makes you think that a defederated instance votes are still captured?
Why do you care about what happens on another instance?
At no point in your post does your question about mental health get a mention.
What are you attempting to really ask?
Yeah, all nice and peachy.
Two years ago I submitted an application for an expression of interest with a globally significant project. I received an automated response advising me that I'd be considered for every role.
A year later, after attempting to contact the organisation repeatedly, I get an email from a recruiter within the organisation saying the same.
A year later, last week, after more attempts to contact the organisation, I attempted to update my resume and discover that I cannot because I've been "disqualified for the role" without any indication why or when this happened.
I've been in my profession for over 40 years, I want to work in an interesting environment and eat food.
That combination does not appear to exist on this planet, at least not where I can find it.
I'll note that overall job search is so broken that at one point I was told that my experience as an ICT Consultant would be suitable for the role of dog walker.
Have you considered that not everyone is out to get you?
This is the second post with Unix and socks on my feed in the past few minutes.
There was a post about software and socks a few weeks or so ago where I replied about a company called functional software that made functional socks which I wore for years, which come to think about it also started a discussion about functional programming.
Anyway, here's a community where the socks seem to be coming from.
Not sure what voting has to do with it, this is not Reddit and there is no karma around these parts. I haven't voted on the matter, but I can say that your response seemed incongruous at best.
As far as having a job or not, that's nothing to do with camping and outdoor activities, that's to do with poor working conditions and entirely caused by your employer.
You have the right to be happy and healthy and if your workplace scares you to the point where you're afraid to go outside, you seriously need to look for a different employer.
Not sure how sleeping under the stars for two nights is considered an extended trip, but I can tell you that being disconnected from the onslaught of 24/7 news is good for my mental health and it gives me the opportunity to think, laugh and have fun with friends.
I was driving home with a good friend after camping out for an amateur radio contest weekend and we pulled into the Stud Country Tavern at North Dandalup for some lunch.
The staff member said that this would be the last meal they would be serving.
We asked why.
After looking at us as if we were mad, we were shown the local paper where the lockdown would go into effect that evening at 18:00, 22 March 2020 in Western Australia.
You're welcome.
I understand that being able to write software and be deliberate about accounting gives you a closer relationship with your financial situation.
For me the issue is that there are no guardrails around the plaintext accounting model, which means that you have the freedom to shoot yourself in the foot.
My current accounting software as rubbish as it is, stops me from making stupid mistakes, credits instead of debits for example. Plaintext accounting won't.
So either you need to never make a mistake, or have a way to figure it out.
All that kind of safety net doesn't exist. You can still make the books balance, but at some point you're going to find a hole and spend weeks fixing it, or the taxman will and you'll be paying a fine.
I exported the line items from my current software into plaintext accounting, even made it balance and match my actual accounts.
Then I needed to write an invoice and had to make my own, from scratch and manually enter the data twice, once into the invoice, another into plaintext accounting, giving me the chance to make an error twice, perhaps even a different one on either process. And that's just one invoice.
I have considered writing my own accounting software from scratch, or forking something, but that's not going to pay for food, so I kept looking instead.
It's not a great place to be, either from a business perspective, or a mental one, but that's where I'm at.
Foundations of Amateur Radio - Becoming Mode Agile #podcast
Over the years I've talked about different ways of using our license to transmit. I've discussed things like modes such as voice AM, FM, and SSB, and digital modes like FT8, WSPR, RTTY, FreeDV, Hellschreiber, Olivia and even Morse code.
Recently it occurred to me that there is something odd about how we do this as a community. Now that I've realised this it's hard to unsee. Let me see if I can get you to the same place of wonder.
Why is it that we as amateurs only use one such mode at a time?
Let me say that again. With all the modes we have available to us, why do we only use one mode at a time, why do we get our brain into the mindset of one activity, stop doing that in order to move to another mode?
It's weird. Amateur radio is what's called "frequency agile". What I mean by that is we are not restricted to a fixed number of channels like most, if not all other radio users. We can set our transmission frequency to whatever we want, within the restrictions imposed by our license
Gotta love the administrative efforts made at 2 am .. wonder if the person doing those updates was being paid overtime .. you know in the name of .. efficiency.
Plain text accounting (and all the variants) sounds great, right until you need to use it to generate invoices, or depreciate assets, or do a monthly Business Activity Statement, or convert a currency, track repayments, etc.
All of those things require that you write software to achieve that, which means that now instead of solving problems and writing software for my clients, I'm burning hours writing software so I can run my business.
Even if I did that, I'd have no way to validate the processes, short of becoming an accountant.
GNUcash, held up as an example by anyone you ask has no documentation for importing data, has no sample company datasets, has no Business Activity Statement, continues to prefer using an XML file as a database and is unreadable on a 4k monitor.
Kmymoney is fine for home users, but specifically not for business.
Odoo, Adiempere, ERPnext and the six or so other ERP tools have poor or non existent documentation, same issues as GNUcash in relation to data and import, and have a poor track record in solving basic issues that are completely unacceptable in a business setting. For example ERPnext didn't do currency fractions properly (ERPnext uses Centavo instead of Cent for the USD fraction: https://github.com/frappe/frappe/issues/13445, took 13 months to fix).
Last week I evaluated Apache OFbiz. It looks like a product from 1995, and trying to find anything is impossible. For shits and giggles, try setting the global date format to yyyy-mm-dd. There are three different repositories and the Docker installation instructions don't even bother to include which one to clone in which order. It starts at: "run the docker build command". Not to mention that it uses a database called Derby. I've been writing software for over 40 years and until last week I'd never heard of it. That's not something you want in business software.
I could go on, I've tested dozens. This is just from memory.
Why did I test all these?
Because I'm still running a 25 year old accounting package that doesn't run on current hardware, isn't supported, doesn't run under Linux and has all my data hostage.
Business Accounting software under FOSS is abysmal. Poor quality, poor documentation, poor functionality, limited locale support and limited local support.
CAM software under FOSS is limited to three axis at best, but most is two and a half axis.
Office functionality is covered with LibreOffice. Your assertion that it's 20 years behind is in my experience not based in fact.
Source: I've been using FOSS for over a quarter of a century.
BIOS could be managing CPU based on battery power.
CPU thermal throttling.
Hardware fault.
As I said, "like GitHub".
The same types of restrictions no doubt exist on other shared repository platforms.
I've not seen anyone attempting to use a platform already dedicated to adult content as a place for a repository, but that seems like an idea worth pursuing.
With Google maps on many phones you should be able to get a good idea if this true or not.
With Google maps on many phones you should be able to get a good idea if this true or not.
The regulator in #Australia, the #ACMA, is looking for submissions on updating the Amateur Radio Licence Conditions Determination
Foundations of Amateur Radio - Playing Games On-Air #podcast
One of the basic aspects of being human and growing up is the process of learning. From a young age we explore our environment, play with others, have fun, fall over and bruise our knees, get up and try again. The playing aspect of this is often discussed as a way to keep things interesting. We add a competition element as an added incentive, so much so that we formaulate it into global competitions and call it sport.
As a species it might surprise you that we spend about 1% of all Gross Domestic Product on sport, compared to science, which is about 2% of Global GDP. To give you some context, Agriculture accounts for about 4%, Manufacturing is 15%, Industry is about 26%, and Services account for roughly 62%. If you noticed that this is more than 100%, take it up with the World Bank, I'm a radio amateur, not an economist.
Over the years I've explored different aspects of our chosen hobby of amateur radio. Time and again I return to experimentation, learning and having fun. Now I absol
At its meeting on March 27, 2025, the Board of Directors of Radio Amateurs of Canada voted unanimously to cancel RAC’s plans to operate a booth at Hamvention (Dayton) in Xenia, Ohio in May. Lors de sa réunion du 27 mars 2025, le Conseil d'administration de Radio Amateurs du Canada a voté à l'unanimi...
Foundations of Amateur Radio - What is Amateur Radio really about? #podcast
When you join the community of radio amateurs, or when you briefly look over the shoulder of the nearest devotee, you're likely to discover that this is a hobby about a great many different ideas. Over the years I've discussed this aspect of our community repeatedly, talked about the rewards it brings you, about the camaraderie, about communication, learning, research, soldering, disaster recovery, public service, and all the other thousands of activities that this hobby represents to the world.
While all those things might be true for some, they're not true for everyone. Many amateurs get excited about antennas, some immediately, some eventually. The same can be said for all the other points of what we think of when we discuss our hobby with others.
Recently I saw a random comment on social media from a person who was having issues with their mobile phone on their property. I considered and ventured an opinion about what might be the cause and how they might go about discovering wha
We refer to jeans as "a pair of jeans", but the only thing that there are two of is the legs, it's still only one item of clothing.
You can't wear one leg each from two different pairs of jeans and go about your daily business, like you could for two pairs of shoes or socks, each of which is independent from the other, albeit left and right specific in various cases.
The same is true for a pair of reading glasses.
Whilst it's obvious that both glasses and jeans (and pants in general) are referred to as being a pair, due to the two legs and eyes aspect, we don't refer to a jumper as a pair of jumpers, unless there's physically four sleeves attached to two bodies.
Why is that and where else does this occur?
Why do we continue to treat Death as an exception?
Death is inevitable but we still seem flummoxed by it happening. We have all kinds of End of Life policies and procedures which do everything possible to make life difficult for those left behind.
Our language is around loss and unexpected, and grief and being bereft.
Why do we make Death so hard to process in our community and what can we do to normalise it across society?
Foundations of Amateur Radio - What is the difference between a Dummy Load and an Antenna? #podcast
Recently I started an experiment I plan to run for a year. Using a WSPR beacon and a dummy load I'm transmitting 200 mW, 24 hours a day across all bands supported by my hardware, in this case it covers 80m, 40m, 30m, 20m, 17m, 15m, 12m, and 10m. The aim of the experiment is to determine if, and to what extent my dummy load can be heard outside my shack. Why? Because I've not seen anyone do this and because a dummy load is widely believed to not radiate, despite evidence to the contrary.
Together with the transmission side, I've also configured an RTL-SDR dongle, initially with the telescopic antenna it came with, now, since my HF antenna isn't being used by the beacon, I'm using it instead. It's about five metres away from the beacon, outside. It's a helically wound whip resonant on the 40m band built by Walter VK6BCP (SK). It's what I've been using as my main antenna for the past seven years or so.
While I'm telling you this, my beacon has been heard by my dongle 1,182 times across
Foundations of Amateur Radio - Echos from the past, 150 ms ago #podcast
Recently Glynn VK6PAW and I had the opportunity to play radio. This isn't something that happens often so we try to make the most of it. For our efforts we had plenty of frustrations, to the point where we were joking that I should rename this to "Frustrations of Amateur Radio".
That was until we heard something weird on-air. All setup shenanigans forgotten, we marvelled at the experience.
I was playing around on the 10m band, trying to hear people making noise and potentially our first contact for the field day we were participating in, when I heard something odd. Two stations talking to each other, but the audio was strange. It was like they were doubling up, the same audio played a fraction of a second later, until that moment, something I've only ever heard in a radio studio whilst editing using a reel-to-reel tape machine with separate recording and playback heads.
Having just started using a digital only radio, at first I thought this was an artefact of the radio. I took note
Privacy-Respecting European Tech Alternatives
There is a growing sentiment that the US shouldn't be relied upon for the technologies that many people and businesses use every day. These privacy-centric recommendations come from a variety of European-based companies and organizations, that you should definitely consider checking out!
cross-posted from: https://infosec.pub/post/25342439
Amateur needs to regain access to their Google account without access to their recovery mobile phone
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.radio/post/6473282
One of our fellow amateurs needs help to recover their Google account. They have the credentials, but no longer have access to their recovery phone number.
Does anyone have any suggestions on how to proceed? My Google-fu is only unearthing unhelpful forum posts without any firm process described by Google.
Anyone have any links or contacts?
Amateur needs to regain access to their Google account without access to their recovery mobile phone
One of our fellow amateurs needs help to recover their Google account. They have the credentials, but no longer have access to their recovery phone number.
Does anyone have any suggestions on how to proceed? My Google-fu is only unearthing unhelpful forum posts without any firm process described by Google.
Anyone have any links or contacts?
Foundations of Amateur Radio - Bald Yak 11, the goo between hardware and software #podcast
Recently I received a question in relation to the Bald Yak project. If you're not familiar, "The Bald Yak project aims to create a modular, bidirectional and distributed signal processing and control system that leverages GNU Radio."
I know that I've said that several times now and I suspect I'm going to say it several more times before we're done. I was asked about a specific radio and if this project could make it use a frequency that the supplied software didn't cover.
The answer is deceptively simple and if you know me at all, you know what's coming: "It depends". As with many things, what it depends on is not fixed. I'll come back to the question, but I'm making a diversion past a magical place, the local hardware store. You can buy everything you need to build a house with the caveat that some assembly is required. GNU Radio is similar for building a signal processing system, but, wait for it, some assembly is required.
In the context of GNU Radio this means that you'll need t
Undocumented "backdoor" found in Bluetooth chip used by a billion devices
Undocumented "backdoor" found in Bluetooth chip used by a billion devices
Foundations of Amateur Radio - DX on a dummy load? #podcast
Recently I made a joke about operating your station with a dummy load in response to John VA3KOT operating their station with the craziest antenna they ever used.
It got me thinking about the ubiquitous "dummy load" as an antenna.
Since becoming licensed I've spoken with several amateurs who tell a similar story, one comes to mind immediately, Lance VK6LR, now SK, who told me that they managed an unexpected 2m contact with another station using a dummy load, across the city. There's various versions of this doing the rounds, incandescent light bulbs used as both dummy load and antenna, coiled up roll of coax, everyone has a story to tell.
Having spent several years proving that you can in fact use 10 mW and be heard on the other side of the planet, 13,945 km away, it tickled my fancy to think about what would happen if I replaced my antenna with a dummy load on purpose, as a test.
For the past two or so months my WSPR beacon has been transmitting every ten minutes on the 15m band.
What is the end game?
What kind of world are the Orange and his puppet master billionaires building?
Are we headed for slavery, extinction, the matrix or some other post apocalyptic future?
How do these despots think that food arrives?
At the moment it seems they're hell bent on global destruction.
Foundations of Amateur Radio - What's the story you'd like to tell yourself? #podcast
When you joined the global community of radio amateurs you did so with a perspective that represented, at the time, what you thought the hobby was and how it operated. Since then, years, months, even days ago, that perspective has shifted in both subtle and obvious ways.
One of my local amateur radio clubs, Ham College, was specifically formed to provide amateur radio education and license exams. It's where I went to get my Foundation license in 2010 and it's where many of the local amateurs have been taught over the years.
For years I've been semi-regularly visiting Ham College during their Foundation course sessions. The purpose of my visit is to share what it's like to be an amateur, what things you don't really know about before you get licensed, and what things to look out for when you are.
In general I talk about how to find the rest of the community, what you can expect and what to do with your license once you pass the exam. I try to cover the highlights without overwhelming
Foundations of Amateur Radio - Bald Yak, universe 10, how does all fit together? #podcast
Recently I received a lovely email from Michele IU4TBF asking some pertinent questions about the Bald Yak project. If you're unfamiliar, the Bald Yak project aims to create a modular, bidirectional and distributed signal processing and control system that leverages GNU Radio.
The short answer to how I'm doing getting GNU Radio to play nice with my computer is that I have bruises on my forehead from banging my head against the wall. When I get to success I'll document it. To be clear, I'm not sure what the root cause is. I suspect it lies between the GNU Radio developers, the people making packages and the manufacturer of my computer. I'm the lucky one stuck in the middle.
A more interesting question that Michele asked was, for Bald Yak, what is the A/D and D/A requirement for making GNU Radio talk to an antenna?
This is a much deeper question that meets the eye and I think it serves as a way to discuss what I think that this project looks like.
Ultimately in the digital realm, to r
Foundations of Amateur Radio - Bald Yak, droplet 9, fosphor and the impertinence of software #podcast
Have you ever come across a solution to a problem that you sort of knew you had, but didn't really appreciate until that moment? I had one of those recently. To set the scene, fair warning, we're not going to solve this today, we're still very much shaving yaks, but there's plenty to take away.
So, the scene.
I'm hosting my weekly net. It's going well. All the internet links are up and running again, thanks to the hard work behind the scenes of several unsung heroes, I can name a few, Bob VK6ZGN, John VK6RX and Rob VK6LD, but there are plenty of others whom I don't know and who have yet to stick up their hand to say, I was there. Regardless, thank you.
Anyway, I'm hosting my weekly net, F-troop. A curious thing is occurring. Two of the stations are emitting a tone during their transmission. I'm pretty hot on how things sound, so I ask. We talk about it for a bit when Allen VK6XL comes in and tells us that according to his spectrum analyser it's a 1 kHz tone with harmonics and it's o