xgiving
Since it's that time of year again, I though I would re-post a link to my old photo/recipe for cooking a turkey in a clothes dryer.
Jim on 11.22.06 @ 11:01 AM ET [link]
Since it's that time of year again, I though I would re-post a link to my old photo/recipe for cooking a turkey in a clothes dryer.
Jim on 11.22.06 @ 11:01 AM ET [link]
Here's a simple geeky game for you computer language nerds out there. Build a programming language timeline.
And for you non-geeks out there, they also have a nice selection of non-geek timeline games.
Jim on 11.14.06 @ 09:12 PM ET [link]
My 40m dipole antenna came down the other day in a windstorm. One of the nylon ropes I used to rig it broke under the strain. I decided to take it down completely. I've spent several weeks sending out CQ's on my miniature 40m amateur radio transmitter with no responses. I'm giving up for a while.
I tested the transmitter on a lab bench into a 50 ohm dummy load, and it was putting out about 2 watts, which should in principle be enough to go around the world. But I don't have the equipment to do a proper SWR measurement into my antenna. I'm not even sure how accurate most off-the-shelf SWR meters are in the 2w range. So it's possible there's something wrong with my antenna. It's nothing as simple as an open or a short - I checked for those obvious things.
The 40m band is notoriously difficult due to competition with multi-megawatt international broadcast stations. My transmitter is crystal controlled and the VCXO has about 10KHz of wiggle room, which isn't really enough to avoid them. The Technician Class license that I hold restricts me to a very small slice of the band, anyway.
So I'm going to put it aside for a while. Maybe study for my General Class license, which should be pretty easy. One pass through the ARRL study guide should do it. I've already passed the Morse code part, so I just need the written section.
Jim on 11.12.06 @ 03:32 PM ET [link]
I upgraded my Kubuntu Linux installations to release 6.10, codenamed "Edgy". On both systems there were upgrade problems, with various things I had to fix by hand afterwards. This is consistent with a lot of the other reports I've heard about this release. It's OK on a clean install but the upgrades are buggy.
Overall, Edgy is alright. Nothing earth-shattering.
I also played around with Xgl, compiz, and Beryl, which are used for fun 3D desktop effects. On my new machine with a dual-head Nvidia display, I got Xgl and Beryl to work, but not well. Some applications (wine) ran badly and crashed. I finally gave up and went back to the standard desktop. On my home ATI-based system, I couldn't get it to run at all.
The fancy desktop effects are partly efforts by the Linux community to compete with similar effects on Apple's OSX and Microsoft's upcoming Vista. At this point it's not ready for prime time.
Jim on 11.05.06 @ 05:54 PM ET [link]
Email: jim@jimandbarb.DELETETHISPART.net
(please remove the DELETETHISPART before sending me mail!)