Summits On The Air

As many (OK, all) of my friends know, I'm an Amateur Radio Operator, callsign KD7KUJ.  It's actually a pretty big deal to me, and anyone who faithfully follows my blog can expect to see quite a few posts about radio in the near future.

Recently, in my Geography Field Methods class, we took a 4 day field trip to Yosemite, the Alabama Hills, and the White Mountain Range.  I took my radio, and programmed the CARLA Repeater System (http://www.carlaradio.net/), hoping to stay in contact with some of my friends back in Reno when my cell phone wasn't working.  All in all, it was a fun trip.  I learned a lot about geography, saw some really cool geology, and even spent some time in the Alabama Hills, where a great many movies were filmed (In fact, we camped in that place between Germania and Spain where Russel Crow found renewed spirit to get home in Gladiator).  On the last day of the trip, we hiked to the peak of White Mountain, east of Bishop, CA.  From that peak, I talked to people throughout California via a repeater in Tonapah.  They mentioned that if they tracked such things, I would win the award for "Highest checkin to the system."  Well, that is certainly a pretty cool distinction, and I wanted to get more involved in that aspect of the radio art.


Summits On The Air (SOTA) is an achievment program where you earn points for "Activating" mountain tops on the radio.  The basic premise is that you hike to the top of a mountain with a radio and an antenna, and you talk to people from that peak.  More information about the program can be found at http://www.sota.org.uk/.  I have known about this program for quite some time now, but my experience on White Mountain really drove me to research it a bit more.  I think I'm addicted...

I know it's late in the year for this, but I want to start "Activating" summits every weekend that I can do so safely.  I wanted to do Mt. Rose last weekend, but timing didn't work out.  I guess Rose is out now that it's covered in snow (I'm not snowshoing up to the peak... I'm crazy, but not THAT crazy).  But there are plenty of other peaks in the area that won't be impossible to achieve year round;  I guess I should start coordinating with my friends ;)

Pacificon 2012

This weekend, Amber and I had the wonderful opportunity to go to Pacificon 2012, and the ARRL National Convention in Santa Clara, CA.  We were there primarily for pleasure, but we also took care of some business.

I recently developed a script that uses GDAL 1.9 to convert USGS Topo Quad DRGs to a format compatible with Google Earth and the AvMap G6.  There were some problems with my download process, and so some quads are missing accross the country, but I have posted to my website (kd7kuj.us) quads for the vast majority of the country.

Because of these map contributions, AvMap added me to the Beta testing team for their APRS model of the G6.  They also generously donated a G6, Kenwood TM-D710, and a Byonics TinyTrak4 so that I can become proficient with them and help provide support to the community.

The G6 and the TM-D710 arrived in the mail just in time for me to mount them in the car and program them to work with each other on the trip down to Pacificon.  I was extremely impressed with the combination;  Once configured, they work seamlessly together, and make a very strong in-vehicle navigation and communications system.

A few quirks about them:  Because I have recently been playing with CARLA, and because CARLA uses a dual tone system, I was disappointing to find that the TM-D710 doesn't support encoding and decoding 2 different tones.   The manual suggests that you can program an Odd Split, and that MAY support two tones... But I haven't tried it yet.  Also, the G6APRS beeps with every exit, with a popup notification saying to stay on the freeway...  I think the beep is excessive and can get annoying.  If anything, it has a tendency to cause one to tune it out; So that if something important DOES come up, your likely to miss it due to inattentiveness.  For what it's worth, while many people complain about the messaging features between the G6 and the Kenwood not working, I would argue that messaging isn't a feature most people use, and so it's not the end a big deal.

When down at the conference  Amber and I had the opportunity to put some faces with the names and callsigns we had been talking to on the air. It was a fabulous opportunity to socialize and learn some stuff...   Particularly, we rather enjoyed meeting the ARRL's education team;  Amber is a secondary education major, so the opportunity to see how Ham Radio can interface with a classroom was a fun experience.

We also got to spend some time together, and went over the hill into Santa Cruz for several hours of playing on the beach.   Really, I loved the trip, and look forward to going back next year!

Married

Amber and Tyrell Jentink are pleased to announce their Marriage!  <3 15th="15th" 2012="2012" b="b" california="california" nbsp="nbsp" or="or" photos="photos" portola="portola" september="september" tyrellandamber.net="tyrellandamber.net" visit="visit">

That's right, I got married.  It was really pretty awesome... We rented out the Western Pacific, Feather River Route museum in Portola California, and had a beautiful little ceremony.  The wedding party and guests all rode the train to the wedding site, where we had a 1950s era fire engine as our backdrop for the ceremony.  Amber's dress was beautiful, as is traditional, she surprised me by not letting me see it until she was walking off the train at the ceremony site.  We had photos taken of everyone in attendence, and all got back on the train, to return to the museum, where our reception was held in the dining car.  Everything was catered by our fantastic cousin, with the generous assistance of our roommate;  Dinner was amazing, everything was perfect!  After dinner, we had the dance in the baggage car, which was perfect;  I was surprised that it was so spacious  maybe erroring on the side of too much so!   And the night ended with a beutiful night sky, where the rural setting allowed the wedding party to enjoy the stars and share some laughs.  All in all, a major success, and I'm very proud to call Amber Jentink my wife <3 div="div">

The risks of WiFi

And almost certainly illegal, and very certainly immoral...

I follow this blog... http://nonbovine-ruminations.blogspot.com/  It's pretty good. Talks about all kinds of nerdy stuff, including ham radio and computers and technology and pretty much everything I find interesting.   You should all go read through some of the archives, they really are a good read.   But the most recent post is the one I will refer to in this post.   It was about the dangers of unencrypted networks.   I have long known the powers of Airsnort, Aircrack, and other tools used for monitoring wireless networks.   I knew you could listen to, and record anything that is ever sent over a wireless network.   I thought it was cool...   But it was complicated, and I didn't really care...

But that blog post referred to a Firefox extension called Firesheep, http://codebutler.com/firesheep, which will happily record packets, focusing primarily on usernames and passwords to websites that it cares about.  And when you click on a person's username?  It logs you in as them.  Super easy, super creepy.   Now, like I said, this is almost certainly illegal, and I don't suggest anyone use it...   I do suggest, however, that you all go into your Facebook settings and turn on HTTPS.  And I suggest you get smart about where you log into stuff.   And if your on an unencrypted network, be careful about what data you enter.   Cuz this is just stupidly easy to use.  

As a last thought, TMCC and UNR both encrypt their wireless networks now.  Therfore, it is safe to use your computer and browse to your hearts content in those locations.   Still, a bit of vigilance can go a long, LONG ways....

BPMDJ on Fedora 14 x86_64

It's not typically my style to do how-to's.   It's my general impression that by the time I do something, it has been done by dozens before me.  However, it appears that in this time, that's not the case.

OK, first a little background:

I have a music library of a decent size:  Just shy of 83 hundred tracks of CD quality FLACs.  I have spent quite a bit of time standardizing the storage schema, so that all the folders are sorted uniformily and all the files are named appropriately.  I then used MusicBrainz Picard to tag the albums, and EasyTag to tag the miscellaneous collections.  After all of that, I can say with some comfort that my collection is at least uniform and that it's tags are correct.

The next big thing for me is to be able to create playlists that are good for working out.  I have been reading about how matching your music's beats to your workout will help you workout longer and more efficiently, and I have installed a couple apps on my phone that will match music to your jogging pace automatically, IF your music is already tagged for such magic.

And so this brings me to my problem:  Tagging upwards of 8 thousand songs BPMs by hand isn't a task for the feint of heart, or for those who have jobs.   As such, I have spent several months questing for the very best BPM counter for linux.  I have tried various products, such as a plugin for Amarok, a hidden feature of Banshee, etc. but none of them ever worked for me.  In all my research, people kept pointing towards a product called BPMDJ (http://bpmdj.yellowcouch.org), but it's not available in binary form.

This leads to the extended problem:  I spent MONTHS not able to compile the stupid thing.  Well, today, hours of fiddling and a very decently worded bug report later, I was successful, and this is the process:

1. I installed all the dependencies months ago, and so this list may be incomplete... If anyone finds a problem, please let me know and I will update this post.  Basically, the following command (as root) should get the job done:

yum install qt-devel alsa-lib-devel fftw fftw-devel mpg123 lame vorbis-tools mplayer

2. I downloaded the source from http://bpmdj.yellowcouch.org/
3. Per the instructions on their home page, and because Fedora is always just a little bleeding edge with their packages, I had to patch symbol.h to be compatable with the QT packages included:

Change:

Symbol() : text(NULL)

{

}; 

To:

Symbol() : text((const char*)NULL) 

{

};

4. Because of a bug in the BPMClock driver (http://bpmdj.yellowcouch.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=1298), you also have to patch  bpmclock.cpp to include the following include line:

#include

5. You can now move on with the steps as intended.  Create a defines file, mine looks like this:

CPP             = g++ -g -O3 -Wall

RCC             = rcc

UIC             = uic-qt4

MOC             = moc-qt4

CFLAGS         += -D COMPILE_ALSA

LDFLAGS        += -lpthread -lm -lasound -lrt -lfftw3

QT_INCLUDE_PATH = -I/usr/include/QtGui/ -I/usr/include/QtCore/ -I/usr/include/Qt/

QT_LIBRARY_PATH = /usr/lib64/libQtCore.so.4

QT_LIBS         = -lQtGui

BITS            = 64

6. Run the make command, and everything should play nice.  I then moved bpmdj, bpmplay and bpmdjraw to/usr/bin, and added it to my Application Launcher, and it seems to be working... Now on to the original goal and question: Will this read and tag all my files?  Only time will tell.

These instructions successfully build the program and get it installed.  In my next post, I will explain how to setup and use the program.

The FCC doesn't require search warents?

OK, I'm going to take a strongly political slant today, instead of my normal technological one.   Good luck!

As many of you know, I am an Amateur Radio Operator, and as such, I get a lot of information about goings on amongst the various radio services.   Today, in a newsletter from the Amateur Radio Relay Legue, there was an article about an individual in California who is causing major interference with a local fire station's radio equipment with their CB radio.   It is the job of the FCC to force compliance among all the radio licenses, settle disputes, etc, and so it is clearly in their realm to do an investigation.  In this case, agents from the FCC made several visits to this CB operator's house, requesting to inspect the equipment for compliance, and the operator denied them access without a search warrant.  In response, the FCC has submitted an order that revokes the person's license to operate, instituted a fine, and deemed the operator as being out of compliance with rules for not allowing the inspection of his equipment without a warrant.

OK, here's where my feelings fall on the subject.  The FCC was doing their job by responding to the Fire Department's request, their investigation was thorough and well done, and they hadn't stepped on anyone's rights by requesting to inspect the equipment.   Additionally, I feel the operator in question was correct in refusing them without a warrant, on the following grounds:  Yes, the license for any radio license gives the FCC the privilege of inspecting your equipment for compliance, and an operator should honor their request.   However, that does not make the FCC more important than the constitution...   If this operator didn't want the FCC on his property, their only course of action is to revoke his license and possibly assess a fine for the interference alone... The equipment inspection should be used only to PROTECT the operator, not as a means of intimidation.

 Now, don't get me wrong, I think this operator is in violation of his licence, should have it revoked, and should be fined.   I think $7000 is excessive and unconstitutional, and I think the FCC should not be making any wars over the Search Warrant issue.   I don't think they have overstepped their authority in this case, but I think the agents chose poor wording and have opened themselves to a lawsuit.  In fact, if such a lawsuit gets filed, I will side with the operator on the subject, as the agents stating they don't need a warrant indicates a blatant disrespect of the constitution from the FCC, and from the Executive Branch as a whole.   They need to be put in check.  As a means of clarification, here's the 4th amendment:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. 

 Certainly, the person can have their license to operate revoked.  But their property can not be inspected or seized without a warrant from the judge.

Cell Phone data plans

T-Mobile recently ran a commercial that states that they offer data plans starting at $10 a month... Well, I went and found out what that means:  $10 for 200MB a month.   I then installed an app on my phone called "Stats Free" to calcuate my data usage, cleared it's logs, deleted all my local email cache and then I synced my 3 email accounts back on, and updated a few apps that were out of date...  I blew through 17.8MB in 10 minutes.   Sure, abnormal behavior.   However, I am a pretty heavy data user, and I wanted to get a number that represented what I might actually use in a month, without having to wait that long...   Assuming I can keep myself under that much in an entire day (I mean, I DO have WiFi at work and at home... How hard can it be?), I would still require a 500-600MB per month data plan.

So much for T-Mobile's "Cheap" plans...