author: n2qfd
Don't know if this is something that would be useful to share as we're heading back into some warm weather again in the North East. I have an old house 1930's buid so not great insulation. Thinking about passive sollitions that I could afford I got some silver backed .5" foam board at the hardware store. The sheets are 48"x96", and half inch thick are around $20/per. You can cut it across to a width that sits on the window sill. My windoes are around 29" wide so I think I got about 3 - 30"x48" pannels. I dressed the edges in duct tape and when I put them in I can keep the house 15-20deg cooler.
https://n2qfd.tumblr.com/post/657093209059704832/living-in-a-house-built-in-the-1930s-in-the
Ok, coming up fun ham radio special event. 13 Colonies starts 1JULY24 thru 8JULY24 and it's just a fun Pokémon like on the air hunt to collect all the 13 colonies stations and/or the bonus stations. Exchange is easy, just your call sign/signal report/state and they have a log sheet you can download and print or you can fill it out on their page and print one completed. If you want they do offere a certificate with a suggested 5$ donation (it's just an 8x10 laser printer thing but I did do that once.) I suspect it'll be a little harder for the western stations but check the spotters. and have fun. It's a casual one.
https://www.dxwatch.com/
http://13colonies.us/
John W. Jones Statue dedicated today in Elmira, NY. If you don't know the history and story of this remarkable person.
https://www.johnwjonesmuseum.org/about
Here are a few photos one with the statue:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/XfjGkZUvVvrV6KqNA
NAQCC Sprint is ON and some QRN out there but good copy. I worked K1SN in VA and W8GG in MI and with having to get up at 0430 EDT all I get is a half hour and I was QRO at 4w! Oh well these guys deserved the points! 72 my QRP people.
Chilly seems down this morning. I'm getting no reply from my favorite weather server!
gemini://gemi.dev/cgi-bin/chilly.cgi/
Anyone know if the administrator at Smol.Pub is still taking key requests? It's been a few days and with the number of dead end blogs that quit some years ago I'm curious.
gemini://smol.pub/
Busy 48 hours for spaceflight. Space-X launch last night, Boeing Starliner attempt lauch (5JUN24 1452 UTC), tomorrow back to Space-X to see if a Starship can out do a bowel of petunias /rather surprised whale this time...
WarGames was released 41 years ago today.
......:::: SHALL WE PLAY A GAME? :::::......
Looks like time's up at gemspace. I thought we had a June 1st shutdown deadline.
gemini://Geminispace.info
So this server seems gone Capsule: rawtext.club They had a thing called gemdrive that would give text directions in a turn by turn way. Anyone know if it's still out there in a functional instance anywhere? This is something I'd like on the phone. Anything that can be a date lite footprint is worth it. gemini://rawtext.club/~sloum/gemdrive.gmi
So this is fun! ASCII Maps.
Demo of https://github.com/rastapasta/mapscii A node.js based Vector Tile to Braille and ASCII renderer for xterm-compatible terminals.
Try it yourself! Open your Terminal and enter => telnet mapscii.me <= (on OSX and Linux, use PuTTY on Windows)
Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors
Ham radio/CW Morse Code Question. Are there any of you out there who type rather than use what is traditionally called stick copy with a pen or pencil? If so, is there a good reason to learn to type when I copy other than not needing the paper on the desk? I'm just curious if there's an opinon.
73 AR SK
This is your reminder, it's Mother's Day. Maybe send an email or a txt or make a call or something ok.
15MAY24 annual ::Ride of Silence:: Wed. May 15th, 7:00 PM Worldwide Cyclists will take to the roads in a silent procession to honor cyclists who have been killed or injured while cycling on public roadways. Although cyclists have a legal right to share the road with motorists, the motoring public often isn't aware of these rights, and sometimes not aware of the cyclists themselves.
https://rideofsilence.org/main.php
So SWPC and Spaceweather.com are taking note that there are CME heading towards earth from a recent solar eruption. They expect that they will impact the planet 10MAY24-11MAY24. As is normal it'll be overcast here in NY when something potentially interesting in the sky is happening.... Perhaps it'll cause some audio distortions as it has in years past on the 40m band...
SO... If you're looking for something that's a bit of a brain bender to watch, saw Junk Head last night. It's a Japanese Stop Motion film. It's pretty wild and if you need resolution at the end of a movie, keep scrolling...
Shavua Tov!
So per the holiday, I recomend Empire it's great https://www.starwarsuncut.com/
Went to bed thinking about what YouTube feeds. Is there a sort of YT feed? Is is like manga that fits into a classification, slice of life vs mecha? I find I have one in particular, SternTube that is a compilation of "interesting" shorts. It's almost slice of life in a way. It's not Win nor Fail, not just funny either. A lot of tech reviews and music after that "type".
Been trying out some of the alternative smolweb places. Most recently I've been on Mastodon and it's been really just a wasteful distraction by comparason to the building and learning my BBS and the Gemini space has encouraged. It's got it's place I suppose but iI think my presence there might take a rapid back seat.
In the realm of greater nerd-dom I got myself a Kura-Toga pencil. It rotated the lead as you write with it to make sure it's always making a smooth line... I love Japanese stationary..
Bread glorious bread.... We had pasta tonight! I'm sure it's better for me to be without but nothing like some noodles and red sauce. In other news I've constructed the ALICE type keyboard from AJAZZ and it's quite nice. The process was pretty painless for something that had no instructions really. the key caps look a little different but not bad and mostly I was into this layout for the ergonomics of the thing. So, first impressions from vs my STAR61 from Magegee... this thing it way easier to work with but then again it's a 75% and the layout is really about comfort over gaming and size. The other wil make a great work board for when I'm CAD drafting and just want to imput a little.
Well, Pesach ends tonight. Here's at something like 20:58 because all Jewish time is local time. To return to the land of things bready it will be the very traditional pizza and beer. What an odd season. It reminds me of my old Community College professor Howard Jitomer... he'd curse us every class that we might live to see interesting times.... I hope it's been interesting enough for him. Chag Sameach.
Keyboard junkie: I'm late to this game as well. Here I've just been playing with ARTSEY.IO and while it's been good for a single hand typing experience it's not really quick enough for me. I'll be playing with an alice layout next but I'd love to be able to flash a new layout to my magegee Star61. I'd like to set it up QUERTY wide. I like the idea of the extra spacing but I don't want to just use a software mapping to do this. I want it on the keyboard so I can swap it around... poo something will strike me.
Aux Lang: Esperanto seems to be the default still but I have recently started to chase the children of Esperanto. Ido seems like a better constructed language in every way to Esperanto except that so few are using it. I have found some side by sides but very little Ido in GemSpace. Any leads would be appreciate.
Slowly figuring out the Gemini thing. I think I like it quite a lot. Being a BBS sysop it just all makes sense. Perhaps it deeper than that. Perhaps it's just growing old and remembering how things were coupled with how things are and seeing how things could be?