Exploring technology and art
APRS Messaging 36 Miles with Two HTs May 03, 2026 Open up aprs.fi and most of the traffic you'll see is position based. I've spent many years playing around with that aspect of APRS but recently had an opportunity to play with the messaging side. With the rise of Meshtastic , I've become more curious about what APRS messaging is capable of considering availability of greater transmit power and a…
Setting up an AudioCodes 440HD Phone with Hams Over IP August 08, 2025 The Nashville Amateur Radio Club came into a surplus of AudioCodes 440HD (PDF) phones so I picked one up with the plan to use it with the Hams Over IP VoIP service. With a Hams Over IP account in hand, here are the steps I took to get this phone up and running. The first step is to ensure the 440HD is running the latest…
Notes From Setting up GlobalTalk Using QEMU on Ubuntu March 09, 2025 I signed up for GlobalTalk in 2024, but never found the time to get a machine set up. Fast-forward to MARCHintosh 2025 and I wasn't going to let another year go by. This is a series of notes from my experience getting System 7.6 up and running on QEMU 68k on Ubuntu. Hopefully this will help others that might be hitting a…
Building a "Remote" Ham Shack January 26, 2025 This post is a work in progress. This project aims to accomplish two goals: Receiving and decoding automatic picture transmissions (APT) from weather satellites and achieve APRS QSOs via the International Space Station APRS digipeater. It's turning into a two-part project as the cost ended up being a bit more than anticipated. Part 1 will focus on…
10 Years of Amateur Radio Weekly October 24, 2024 I nearly missed this before 2024 got away from me, but as of March 15, Amateur Radio Weekly has been making its way into inboxes for 10 years! I had to double check the send date on the original newsletter and do the math because I just couldn't believe this all started that many years ago. A decade is a long time. To be fair, though, ARW did go…
Ham Radio Clubs: It's time to move away from the PDF Newsletter October 18, 2024 It's time for ham radio clubs to move away from the PDF based newsletter as a primary publishing format. The purpose of this post is to help amateur radio clubs and organizations get their content in front of more hams. The PDF format is problematic because it acts as a walled garden, limiting the ways in which the…
First Trip to Hamvention June 01, 2024 I've held an amateur radio license since 2012, but this year marked the first time making the trip up to Dayton, Ohio for Hamvention . Hamvention is the largest ham radio convention in the US. Overall it was a fun experience connecting with people that I've interacted with online for years and years. It was great to meet-up face-to-face. While there's plenty…
Contributing to the Internet Archive's DLARC January 06, 2024 The Internet Archive recently added Amateur Radio Weekly (ARW) to their Digital Library of Amateur Radio & Communications (DLARC) collection and I couldn't be more excited! I've been producing ARW since 2014 (minus a two year pause to focus on grad school) collecting the most interesting stories and projects related to ham radio each…
First POTA Activation December 23, 2023 Parks on the Air (POTA) is one of the best things going for the Ham Radio hobby. It's uncomplicated, fun, and the web app that is central to the entire system is a wonderfully modern technical implementation and user experience. Today, I activated a park for the first time and I can see why so many Hams make activations a regular event. Dedicating 90 minutes…
The State of Linux on a PowerMac G5 October 2023 September 26, 2023 TL;DR Debian 12 Sid (PPC64) will install on an early PowerMac G5 start to finish. Download , then burn the ISO to CD, hold down the "c" key on startup, run through the installer and all should be well. More info on the MacRumors Forum . First of all, this entire article is dumb because it's all about trying to run a modern Linux…
Introducing NetFinder - The Definitive Ham Radio Net Directory April 18, 2023 NetFinder is an online directory of Ham Radio nets designed to help Hams discover new nets and connect with other Amateur Radio operators. A comprehensive and easy to use directory of Ham Radio nets is a project that I've thought about for years and recently spent the past 18 months building. This project is intended to…
Hacking the University Mac Lab March 08, 2023 Everything is a hack, from the rendering engine displaying this text to the onboard software that ran on Apollo . It's all expertly crafted, but the fundamental nature of computers force the potential for bugs and critical errors. No software is full-proof. This is a short story about hacking the University of Tennessee library computer labs around the…
Survey Results: Ham Radio Nets January 02, 2023 A few weeks ago I shared a survey on social media that focused on ham radio nets. This survey was an attempt to understand how people seek out information about nets and how they discover new ones. This post will reveal some of the highlights from the 35 responses that were collected from that survey. First of all, thanks to everyone that…
Apple Watch Owners: How do you rely on this thing? August 03, 2022 After wearing an Apple Watch nearly 24/7 for the last 6 months I switched back to my Fitbit because I kept missing important text messages. It took me a few months to realize this, but Apple approaches smartwatch design completely differently than the other smartwatch brands. While Fitbit and others treat the smartwatch as a…
Yoshi Sodeoka Rides the Psychedelic Wave May 29, 2022 This is a research and writing sample from Art History 701 at SCAD. The assignment was to write a short research paper about a contemporary artist of my choosing. Yoshi Sodeoka Rides the Psychedelic Wave Contemporary artist Yoshi Sodeoka was an early pioneer in combining art and technology in the emerging internet age and continues to influence…
Wasting an Evening with distcc April 25, 2022 I need to stop going down these Gentoo rabbit holes. Recently I picked up an old PowerBook G3, restored it to working order , and opposite of my better judgement immediately installed and compiled Gentoo. Got it working. All was well. Unfortunately, because Gentoo builds all updates from source, it can take 3-4 days just to compile and update a…
My First Experience with the Internet December 08, 2021 I first stumbled on to the Internet in August of 1994. Until that point, I had been online in one form or another, whether that was playing games dialed into The Sierra Network or dialing into local BBS s. In 1994 there really wasn't a direct connection to the Internet available at home. You had to tie up your phone line to dial into a…
Twitter on a 2nd Generation Kindle May 25, 2021 I recently created a Twitter appliance using an old second generation Kindle . The allure of vintage computing has been strong so I figured what better device to play with than an older second generation Kindle. The best feature of this old e-reader is the built-in "free forever" 3G internet access that came with the device. The purpose of the free…
Moving from Hexo to 11ty March 29, 2021 This blog is now generated using Eleventy ! I recently moved everything over from Hexo for a multitude of reasons. Primarily, the template I was using was bloated with unnecessary logic, markup, and various JS libraries. I didn't like the idea of using a template when I could instead build and design something from scratch. It didn't feel right not having a…
Open Firmware DEFAULT CATCH! code=300 October 06, 2020 There are a number of forum posts that focus on a firmware error thrown by older Macs, from PowerBook G3 laptops to some of the early iMacs and G3 towers. All of the posts suggest zapping PRAM and various other software solutions that don't seem to solve the majority of Macs running into the problem. I recently aquired an old Apple PowerBook…
What's the goal? Amateur Radio license changes August 02, 2020 The ARRL appears to be embarking on a campaign to provide more spectrum access to Technician Class Hams. (It's impossible to find any mention of this on their website, but that's a different blog post.) This is the most significant and potentially game changing task the ARRL can take on as the biggest lobbying force for the hobby.…
First Things First Manifesto May 12, 2020 The First Things First design manifesto was a defining document in the design world in the 1960s, so much so that it's been refreshed over the years ( 2000 , 2014 ) to represent the challenges of the current age. With Earth Day being celebrated for the 50th year, yet another iteration ( F1rst Things F1rst ) was written this year. This latest version lined…
Apple Dashboard and how Widgets nearly ruled the world December 14, 2019 The OS X Dashboard death knell has been tolling for some time, but it was once a premier space for front-end devs to show off. This post is a look back on Dashboard's heyday but also how close Widgets came to being the obvious springboard to iPhone apps before the release of the App Store. Steve Jobs demoing Dashboard at WWDC…
Product Management: Any Given Day June 22, 2018 Product Management is sometimes viewed as a nebulous role. Even among PMs there's both great mystery and interest in each other's process, routine, and general way of doing things. To shine some light on what a PM actually does from day-to-day, I thought it would be fun to document my events from a single day providing Product Management support for…
APRS beacon with Uputronics GPS Board and a Raspberry Pi 3 February 10, 2018 For more content like this, subscribe to Amateur Radio Weekly , a weekly summary of the most relevant content in the world of Ham Radio. ♦ This is a detailed, step-by-step guide to using an Uputronics GPS board as the main component of a Pi based APRS position beacon. This project is very similar to my previous APRS…
The Antenna on Rocky Top November 12, 2017 During homecoming weekend at UTK, KM4BAN and I had an opportunity to take a tour of one of the most unique shacks in amateur radio. The University of Tennessee Amateur Radio club has a set of antennas nestled between the lights at the top of Neyland Stadium in Knoxville. The tower is so high, most of the 102,000+ fans wouldn't ever notice it. With the…
Sabbatical: First Aurora at High Level July 09, 2017 Previous: Part 3 Thunderstorms at Jackfish Lake in Saskatchewan Part 4 From Jackfish Lake in the Battlefords, I was off to High Level via Edmonton. Venturing even further north, the landscape becomes increasingly rural. Forrest, fields of hay dotted by oil pumps and grain elevators are the extent of the landscape. Somewhere along MacKenzie…
Sabbatical: Thunderstorms at Jackfish Lake in Saskatchewan April 25, 2017 Previous: Part 2 Family in Minnesota and crossing the Canadian border Part 3 Once in Canada, the Tahoe was immediately switched over to Metric mode. The way GM handles that on the instrument panel it felt like I was driving really, really fast. At this point the trip computer became useless because I had no idea how many…
Sabbatical: Family in Minnesota and crossing the Canadian border March 16, 2017 Previous: Part 1 Background, preparation, and hitting the road Part 2 Mile 1146: Spirit Lake The drive to Minnesota was largely flat and uneventful. It looked like I would run directly into my first batch of weather, but the timing was just right where the thunderstorm slid just to the east of my final destination of…
Sabbatical: Background, preparation, and hitting the road March 07, 2017 In August 2016 I had the opportunity to take a month off and spend that time on the road, driving from Murfreesboro, Tennessee to Yellowknife, Canada, and back. This is an in-depth, 9 part series of that trip. Part one will start with the preparation involved in planning a month-long road trip, the why, and the first few…
MacBook Pro with Touch Bar: First Impressions January 17, 2017 The new MacBook Pro with Touch Bar has carried with it plenty of criticism even before it landed in the hands of customers. Work handed us new MacBook Pros a couple weeks ago. Here are some observations based on several days of use. Graphics are glitchy Maybe it’s the Apple Thunderbolt to USB-C dongle, maybe it’s my display, maybe it’s…
Super Simple APRS Position Reporter December 13, 2015 Barest of bones APRS RF position reporter Update 7/2019: I highly recommend using Direwolf in place of this solution. Direwolf provides the same result using the same hardware setup but with many more options (smart beaconing, igate, digipeating) and is much less taxing on the Pi's CPU. Most importantly, that project is actively maintained.…
Hiking Mount Mansfield January 03, 2015 In August I had the opportunity to hike the Sunset Ridge Trail to the summit ridge of Mount Mansfield near Burlington, Vermont. This was by far one of the most beautiful, yet challenging hikes I've been on. The trail starting from Underhill State Park was only 3.3 miles one way, but the 2,600 foot elevation gain wasn't easy, especially above the tree line.…
Introducing Amateur Radio Weekly December 09, 2014 While the newsletter has already been published for several issues, I recently realized I haven't formally posted anything about it! With that said, today, I'd like to officially introduce Amateur Radio Weekly . It's an email newsletter published every Saturday featuring the most interesting links shared in the ham radio community that week. The…
SpaceX-4 Lanuch & NASA Social: A Homecoming September 16, 2014 I can't tell you how excited I am to have been selected to attend a NASA Social event featuring the fourth launch of SpaceX's Dragon capsule to resupply ISS . After seeing what my friend Ernie was able to experience during his NASA Social trip, I knew I had to do one, and here's my chance. What makes this trip to the Space Coast extra…
Decoding Data Packets From the International Space Station June 21, 2014 On June 19th I set up my Kenwood HT paired with a magnet mount antenna in the driveway, tuned the radio to 145.825 and listened to data packets from the International Space Station magically flow through the radio's speaker as ISS flew overhead. During a period of three minutes of time, 22 data packets were recorded. I used…
Building the Softrock Ensemble RXTX April 07, 2014 Looking for a cheap HF alternative, I picked up one of the Softrock Ensemble RXTX kits and spent the last several weeks slowly putting the kit together. The Ensemble is a software defined radio. In summary, the hardware provides the signal, leaving the computer software to do the heavy lifting. That includes both tuning and processing of received…
Raspberry Pi + Node.js + Socket.IO + Twitter Streaming API = Internet Bliss February 27, 2014 Update: Twitter no longer offers the Streaming API option. I've had an idea floating around for to build a tiny web app that does nothing but display new Tweets as they roll in from my Twitter User Stream . I envisioned displaying the resulting feed on a spare laptop or an old smartphone 24/7. Node.js…
Building an RSS Reader With Meteor June 27, 2013 Meteor is a nifty Javascript based platform that features live page updates as data is changed across browsers and users. With the demise of Google Reader , I thought an RSS reader might be a good application to put Meteor through its paces. Turns out Meteor does a fantastic job and is a lot of fun to work with. I named my RSS reader Ocular . ( Feel…
Amateur Radio November 09, 2012 Because I'm not already leading a completely geek-filled lifestyle between my day job and my time on Jawgrind discussing the merits of original Star Trek episodes, I decided to seal the deal and get my ham radio license. The process of getting my license kind of happened by accident. My grandfather was a ham (K9PSA) and I always remember seeing his radio setup as a…
Republic Wireless Review November 07, 2012 Now that I have a month's worth of time with Republic Wireless under my belt, I thought this would be a good point to write up a review of those first 30 days. Republic Wireless is geared toward users who spend most of their time in an environment with persistent Wi-Fi. When in range of Wi-Fi access all phone calls are placed and received over Wi-Fi. When…
A quick how-to with the aprs.fi API September 11, 2012 APRS lets users share information (GPS tracks, WX info, etc.) both over the internet and over the air via amateur radio. ( See Wikipedia for more about APRS .) aprs.fi is the go-to site to see current APRS activity in your (or any) area. They also have an API that lets users tie into all this great data. In the example below I've written a…
Old Stones River Road January 07, 2012 If you look at the Percy Priest Lake area on Google Maps you can often see old roads that lead straight into the water. Recently I noticed such a road parallel to Stones River Road here in La Vergne, and this past fall Merredith and I decided to take a walk to see what we could find. Old Stones River Road on Google Maps It turns out there was quite a bit to…
Switching From WordPress to Octopress November 03, 2011 Today marks yet another milestone for Midnight Cheese by successfully making the migration from WordPress to Octopress . With web trends moving toward fast, light, and responsive, my WordPress setup was becoming slow, bloated, and stagnant. WordPress functions well, but for a single user it was just too large of a feature set. The slow…
Displaying Twitter and Weather on your Arduino LCD Screen October 28, 2011 Pieced together from many different sources, the following scripts will allow you to display the Twitter public timeline, the top 20 Twitter trending topics and the current weather on your Arduino LCD screen. This is done with a PHP script and an Arduino connected to OS X via USB. You can download the scripts as a zip file…
10K Apart Weather App October 04, 2011 10KWX is a responsive weather app that I submitted to this year's 10K Apart exercise. The app uses a web browser's geo location feature to grab the user's location and then pass that info off to Yahoo!'s weather API for current conditions and forecast. The application is responsive! To fit within the 10K file size limit, use of images was out of the question.…
Podcastin' with Jawgrind September 05, 2011 I had the opportunity to geek out with Trey and Stephen on the lastest episode of Jawgrind . We had a lot of fun talking about all things web related: VimConf , Skeleton , 10K Apart (I'll be posting my project soon), bookmarking sites, HTML5 and JavaScript Weekly , Rails 3.1 and much more. Alcohol may have been involved. Stephen and Trey are much more…
Seedling: A Garden Tracking App August 29, 2011 Since it's inception about a year ago, I've been working on a new project that has really been a lot of fun. The project is called Seedling and it's a new web app that will let people track the progress of their backyard gardens. The app lets you log basic milestones like plant yield, height, photos, etc. With that data, the app automatically creates…
bbbrowser: Fun with the Dribbble API June 08, 2011 Update June 2018: Dribbble no longer allows access to the "firehose" of shots via the API which means bbbrowser is no longer able to function. Thank you for all the interest and compliments over the years! It was a fun and inspirational project. I love thinking up ways to display interesting data that continuously updates. Browsing through the…
Broadcast iTunes AirPlay Tracks to Campfire Chat with TrackFire June 08, 2011 Update: TrackFire is now on GitHub for your forking pleasure. TrackFire is an AppleScript "app" that posts iTunes track titles played over an AirPlay device to a Campfire chat room. In the office we often play music from iTunes over an Airport Express device for the entire floor to hear. Inevitably, someone asks, "What…