Recent content on Japan, Tech and Open Source
I got free time to spend with HAM gear in the middle of Germany, on a house with 3 floors and a garden behind the house. After doing some connections with FT8, a digital mode, I started to wonder: which of the 2 antennas is best? Huge disclaimer: “best” is relative, I’m trying to optimize for “connections to far away stations”, and did just test for the 20m band…
POTA is ‘Parks On The Air’. You go to a park, deploy antenna and radio transceiver, and to ‘activate the park’ you have then exchanges with at least 10 folks over the air. SOTA is ‘Summits On The Air’: you go to a mountain summit, and for an ‘activation of the summit’ you need at least 4 connections over the air. I’m in Germany right now, and…
In July, I had my first POTA activation. POTA is ‘Parks On The Air’, an activity in the field of HAM radio. There are 2 roles: The Activator , someone going into a park, setting up radio equipment and making connections over the air. With at least 10 connections, it’s a ‘park activation’. The Hunter , folks doing connections to the Activator. Both roles can be…
I recently got myself an Apple MacBook Air M1, these are down to 5万円/350$ here in Japan. The CPU efficient, the screen is good - I plan to use the device as portable desktop with Fedora Asahi Remix. Also for HAM activities: to go to parks/summits, setting up an antenna and have the macbook drive my QMX+ radio transceiver to do FT8 transmissions - the macbook is light and small, the screen is good…
This is my attempt of describing where Linux power consumption measurement is, the handover of metrics to virtual guests, and the current riddle I see for attributing consumption to processes. Overall system consumption So this works reasonably well: Performance Co-Pilot with pmda-denki are work reasonably well for measuring, storing and visualizing the power consumption of whole systems.…
The Cardputer is a small ESP32 based device with Wifi, Bluetooth, battery and keyboard. Dualcore 240Mhz cpu is quite something, it also has a MMU, but the 512kb of RAM are not enough for NetBSD or Linux. I got the device to play with Meshtastic/MeshCore, details here. Yet to be tested is my other use case: for FT8 transmissions, when connected to my QMX+ radio transmitter. My hardware is the…
Remembering Blinry’s Fifty Things you can do with SDR , I thought that something like that for HAM Radio should exist - so here is my attempt of a collection. HAM Radio is a huge field, and most radio amateurs I know are interested in one of multiple of these fields. There is overlap between the areas, and room for discussion of what’s worth getting called out in this context.…
At the middle of last year, I got all the hardware together to do radio transmissions here from my room in the West of Tokyo. It just did not work, and took half a year to debug. This here is a small recap, for me to understand what I could have done better. I will also sprinkle in some tech details - might make it an interesting read for people loosely interested in the topic, and so the…
I got this Power-Z measurement device the other day.. what is it, and how does it fare against the other measure methods? My last comparison was in 2022 . The contenders I have some sources for measurements here: The Power-Z USB meter, a small device which can be put ‘in the middle’ of a power connection. It has a USB-C power input, USB-C power output, and a third connector over which…
How good is the performance of mobile phones, and how power efficient are they? I have already compared performance/efficiency of architectures with each other. How are mobile phones doing? The device enabling me to measure this: the Power-Z USB meter. It’s around 100$, but has a native Linux driver. Together with Performance Co-Pilot and the scripts I used in the past, I looked at these…
TL’DNR: My steps towards emulating an Amiga 1000 keyboard, using the GPIO (input/output) pins of a Raspberry Pi, and implementing parts of the keyboard protocol in Python. Background Around 1997 I got an Amiga 1000 (“A1000”), without keyboard or floppies. Released in 1985, the A1000 has no harddisk, and after booting is asking for a 3.5" floppy disk with kickstart firmware. Once…
TL’DNR: Introduction into Meshtastic/Meshcore, hardware recommendations, first steps. If you get 2 devices, you can already play. Depending on where in the world you are, you might see much Meshtastic/Meshcore used, or none at all. Meshtastic seems much more widely spread than Meshcore. Terms LoRa (“Long Range”) is a technology for transmitting data via radio signals. It’s…
Since spring of this year I’m learning to pick up morse code, so to hear sequences of dits and dahs/long and short sounds, and interpret the characters they represent. That’s progressing.. but it’s just covering the part of interpreting received morse code. For sending, you would want to connect a morse key or paddle to the computer - I’m describing here a simple way to do…
TL’DNR: I see warning signs everywhere around the topic. We need more honest discussion of AI, evaluation of pros and cons. For most areas, we should not yet invest our resources into GPUs, model training and inference. These opinions and views are my own. Resources AI is consuming resources, mostly for production of the hardware for model training and inference, mostly GPUs for model…
The Steam Deck is a hand held gaming console from Valve. Out of the box, it runs SteamOS, a Linux distribution from Valve. Main application is to run “steam”, a frontend to download and run games, Valve is operating an online store for games. Most of these were written for Windows, but 90% of these run also on the Steam Deck - also thanks to Valves investments into…
Terms Details on some terms I will use: LoRa (“Long Range”) is a technology for transmitting data via radio signals. It’s designed for much longer distances than Wifi: the record for LoRa is around 300km, and typical distance 10km. Downsides: less throughput than Wifi, and higher latency. LoRa defines various profiles, these allow to fine tune latency/ throughput versus distance…
In 2008 I was in Japan for 3 month. After returning to Germany, I thought it might be fun to go to Japan again for holiday, and being able to speak a bit - that started it all. My language learning history I grew up in East Germany, so learning German. In Socialist East, I was part of the last school year of pupils learning Russian as first foreign language, the language of the east block. I think…
I presented this topic at TIARA (with emphasis at Linux/the software), and at the Tokyo Linux Users Group, with emphasis at the radio concepts and how they translate to software. The talk was recorded , and the slides are here . TL’DNR I will describe a setup with Software Defined Radio (SDR) receiver, computer and OpenWebRX+ software. To get an idea what accessing the OpenWebRX+ software is…
TL’DNR In this article I will look into the details of a special case with fully emulated systems, where an older Linux distro performs better than a new one. I will use RHEL7 and RHEL10 here, but the difference can also be seen with other distros. This is limited to the not very common case of the system running as a fully emulated environment, for example with QEMU. Most environments run…
What’s Morse Code? Morse Code, also known as Continuous Wave (CW), is one of the oldest ways of electronic communication. You might also know the term from movies, when in emergency situations someone encodes Morse Code in hitting a pipe with a hammer, and someone else picks this up in listening to the sound transmitted by the pipe. ~40 characters get encoded into sequences of short dots,…
How it started A friend owns rice paddies in Tochigi-ken, the district north of Tokyo where I live. Around the beginning of May, the rice planting is done. Since some years I attend the rice planting: initially going by train, and now for the third year by bike. I can not go by bike right at the day of planting, it’s just to far. So I go to Utsunomiya, stay over night, and then at the day of…
With the right wing parties in Germany getting stronger, my Mastodon timeline gets posts from people considering to move to other countries, temporarily or forever. Japan is known for being peaceful, rich of culture, and is often called out as potential destination - so as a German living in Japan since 8 years, I will try to look at the relevant aspects. Maybe this sparks also others living in…
Virtualization? Emulation? What are these, after all? Virtualization in our context here means that when a guest operating system does computations, these get directly offloaded to the hypervisors cpus. One of the benefits is performance, one of the downsides is that the guests cpus need to exactly match the hypervisors cpus, or a subset. Emulation means that the computations are done in software.…
I’ve been living in Germany and Japan, let’s look at some aspects of the health systems. Rundown of a typical doctor visit I’m entering the doctors office at 10:30 on a weekday. The naming is already interesting: in Japan, the normal places where doctors investigate and treat patients are called clinic (クリニック), which sounds like the German “Klinik” - but in Germany…
Capturing some projects of this holiday season. Partly to get a feeling of having accomplished something, and partly as reminder to continue the unfinished projects. German HAM radio exam Right at the start I was sitting down in the German HAM radio exam in Munich. There are 3 levels of HAM radio certificates in Germany. You can apply for the highest one, work through various exam sheets, and if…
What’s this about? Since a while I was wondering how to setup a chain of LEDs, where each LEDs colour and brightness could be assigned by me. In Germany I got 2 LED chains which turned out to just allow pre-programmed colours and blink patterns. I’m looking for full flexibility, so I could also for example deploy them behind the monitor and have them shine in the dominant colours of…
What the ISP offers I’m using NTT flets as physical provider (fiber), and Biglobe for the packets ontop. Regarding IPv6, Biglobe allows on a webfrontent to request v6, which I did. Then they offer 2 options: IPv6オプション (“option”) IPv6オプションライト(“option light”) I was first on the former, then switched to the latter. Their site on this. With both of these options, I get…
Note: I’ve taken out the IPv6 pieces here and moved them to a dedicated blog article. Since the beginning of 2024, I run my own router. I’m using NTT flets GBit fiber as physical provider, and Biglobe as ISP ontop - other ISP’s do the IPv6 things differently. I started with 2 OpenWRT routers, after both of them went defective, I run the Star64 RISC-V board as router, with this…
So.. I got a new monitor, the INNOCN 32M2V . Which resultion can I drive it with, from my Thinkpad T590? Investing the Thinkpad T590 capabilities My daily driver at home is a Thinkpad T590, with Intel i7-8665U CPU. First limitation is the GPU, the Thinkpad has a Intel UHD Graphics 620, which is imbedded in the processor. Intel lists for this cpu a maximum of 4096x2304@24Hz for HDMI output, and…
Choosing a monitor is hard! When you buy shoes, you try them out.. but you just know for real after wearing them for some weeks. We might see monitors at stores, or try to get advice from others - but everybody has different use styles, so it’s hard to decide for a model. What I use the monitor for: working with multiple terminals, but not more than 3 or 4 on one screen. I heavily switch…
While last years summer in Germany became the Retro summer , this time I took the RTL-SDR software defined radio with me for playing. RTL-SDR is a usb2 stick which you can plug into a computer, attach an antenna, and then have a look what’s “in the air”. Software I’m using the antennas which I got with the RTL-SDR device: 2 teleskope sticks with length of up to 1m each.…
What’s this about? Colleagues asked: “Hey Chris, so what’s actually in that mobile HAM radio device, what do you get for 550EUR?” - I’ll sum that up here. I’m coming back to the hobby after 20 years, so also discovering what’s possible now. 20 years ago, I used CB-radio. After getting HAM radio licensed here in Japan, I got a decent HAM radio transmitter…
Let me capture my favourite hiking spots around Tokyo. This can give others hints, and I have a convenient page to refer to when choosing a hiking tour together. When you are in the area and in the mood, let me know! I’m out in the green almost every weekend. As for planning: I have more details for the trips on the wiki. You can simply cut’n’paste the start station into google…
When I lived in Munich, the Alps were near - but I never got into the habit of hiking. Munich had plenty of green spots already in the city, I had a woods directly behind the house, great for jogging. Tokyo is very different. Full trains, skyscrapers and lots of concrete push people into hobbies like camping, or hiking. Tokyo has a great public transport, it’s easy to get to nearby…
We get workplace computers refreshed in 3 year cycles. My old system was a Thinkpad T590 with 32GB memory, and 8th gen Intel CPU. When it was up for refresh, I did choose a Macbook, and got a “Apple Macbook M2”, 2023 model, with 16GB RAM. I work as Linux engineer, doing support/development/communication. My goal is to use Linux directly on the AppleSilicon hardware. Now after some…
HAM radio? HAM radio or ‘Amateur radio’ is the use of radio frequencies for noncomercial private purposes. After the German unification, I had been doing CB-radio in Germany. CB is ‘Citizens Band’, these are a few frequency channels which can be used without any license. I had gone as far as setup a metal antenna on the roof of the house, had spent nights with friends on a…
When I came to Japan in 2016, I had my German drivers license translated by the Japanese Automobile Federation . For ~4000 yen I got translations. Like some other expats from Germany, I got the idea that I would then have to run through normal Japanese drivers school and pass the exam. Public transport in Tokyo is great, so I kept it at this. Now in my 8th year in Japan, I learned that drivers…
How do Germany and Japan think about World War 2 (WW2)? Why are some of my friends not visiting the Yasukuni shrine in Tokyo? This is my attempt to sort out the information I received about the 2nd World War, and observations how people think about that time period today - in Germany and Japan. East German views on WW2 As most probably know, Germany had been separated after the war. I grew up in…
Sorting my pictures from this year, I got reminded of the various pieces of tech I got into contact with.. The tech year started with writing an article in how Kanji are input with normal keyboards. The area between Japan, Kanji and technology stays interesting for me. AsiaBSDCon In April, we had AsiaBSDcon in Tokyo. I’m much more active in the Linux world, but BSD covers other interesting…
Background Most flat rental agreements in Tokyo are limited to 2 years, and can then be renewed. Renewal is mostly uncomplicated, the tenant just signs again a paper. There is a catch though: in most cases, an estate broker was doing the initial flat search, and at contract renewal they receive again money from the renter: a monthly rent. I was living in this flat for almost 6 years, renewal came…
I was born in former East Germany. At the German unification in 1990, I was 12 years old. A recent TV documentary made me rethink on my East German memory, my take aways about that time - also including how my parents and East German friends perceived that time. How influenced unification and the time after my thinking and my life? East Germany memories Just a view pieces, but they form a picture.…
I have some retro hardware in Germany - in the last weeks I had access, and got to play, try out, find out what works. Capturing the summary here, so I can lookup further activities for the next time I get access, and maybe for others to share ideas for fixing and further debugging. Robotron EC1834 I was born in former East Germany, before the German reunification. Around the unification time, I…
Transport in Tokyo I’m a German, living in Tokyo since 7 years. Cycling is one of the hobbies I took with me to Japan. How to people get around in Tokyo? By train/bus: there are many train stations, e-payment is easy, it’s cheap, on time - so this is by far the most heavily used method By car: this is much less used. To register a car, one has to prove that the car has an own parking…
CPU and Memory The Star64 board is a bit bigger than the Raspi4, both are available with 8GB RAM. Both have 4 cores at up to 1.5Ghz, the Star64 has a RISC-V cpu, the Raspi ARM. My first goal was to look at power consumption, and cpu temperature. At 20°C environment temperature, without attached cooler, the Star64 cpu idles at 46°C. The board pulls 4W then. With a single core under full load, 6W…
The Golden Week This years Golden Week approached, a sequence of national holidays in Japan. Like the last 2 years, a friend invited me to help with planting rice. I live in Tokyo, he lives in Tochigi-ken, north west of Tokyo. In the last years, I did day trips: 2h30min by train, then my friend fetched me by car and we drove another 30min. I have a roadbike which I typically use for up to 40km day…
1: What’s BSD + my BSD history I mostly use Linux, but since the time of the Linux Install parties with the Thüringer Linux User Group , I’m also using BSD. I was lucky enough to meet many BSD folks when I lived in Munich. What’s BSD, after all? My summary: Unix operating systems, mostly with code bases older than Linux. The biggest 3 variants, each with it’s own goals:…
When I started to learn Japanese, I tried to look up Japanese input - and it felt much like an in-club: not having the right search terms, not having a good understanding of the writing system either, and without someone around to ask you were lost. Let’s look into this, along with some details about the Japanese language. The Latin alphabet which is widely used has just 26 characters, so…
Some weeks ago, architect Florian Busch presented in German on architecture in Tokyo. Picking up on his details, I attended an event where we visited one of the buildings he designed, and learend some things. Building in Tokyo Tokyo was built on a river delta, with this it got right from the start many rivers. Over time the rivers got removed, and constructs started to prevent floods. Still as of…
I’m back in Germany for some weeks, and have revived the Commodore Amiga 500. It still works! The gaming experience is different from what we have now, and that is not about better graphics or such. Got me thinking.. why is that? The Technology of the Commodore era I’m focusing here on the 2 systems from the Commodore era: the Commodore 64 (“C64”, released 1982) and the…
My classic software selection In 2016 I moved to Japan, and started to share experiences via multiple ways, all with their own strong points. Japan life observations is a static html document, rendered by asciidoc from a file in markup format. I find this useful for text, with a few images inbetween. The pictures are backed by 2 kinds of albums: fgallery : small and lean, but an abandoned project,…