Surfin': Keep On Laughin'

Are you on vacation? Are you having fun yet?

Have a laugh on me and read this week's installment of Surfin': Keep On Laughin', then return here to post your comments, if any.

By the way, Surfin’ is a weekly column published on ARRLWeb that finds and features Web sites that are related to Amateur Radio, specifically, and radio, in general. If you have any suggestions for Surfin’, please contact WA1LOU using the e-mail link to the right.

T-bird soars

I have been using Microsoft's Entourage on my Mac for sending and receiving e-mail forever. Well, it seems forever. Entourage is part of the Office suite that Microsoft sells for the Mac and except for one annoying feature, it served me well, until now.

First, let me mention the annoying feature: if you have multiple e-mail accounts (like I do), there is a pull-down selection in one of Entourage's menus that allows you to switch accounts (to read and send mail in the other accounts). Problem is that if you are running another Office application (Word, Excel, Powerpoint, etc.), you cannot switch accounts in Entourage until you quit all the other Office applications.

It is a minor annoyance, but it seems to me that the Office suite should have been written so that this would not be a necessity. But, I put up with the annoyance because Entourage worked so well otherwise.

Then I get an e-mail from my Internet service provider (AT&T nee Yahoo nee SBC) informing me that I had to update my e-mail settings because they were going to start using Security Socket Layer (SSL) "to help us ensure the security of your email."

Their e-mail lists the settings I have to change in order to be compatible with their new security system. (They also have a program you can download that will automatically make the changes for you, but as expected, the program is for Windows and leaves their Mac customers out in the cold... again.)

I set up Entourage as required and I could receive e-mail ok, but sending e-mail was an adventure. Immediately after changing the settings, I could send e-mail, but if I tried to send e-mail later, it would fail. I would have to reopen the settings window and reset the settings again with the same results!

My version of Entourage is current; there was nothing new to download, so I reinstalled it, but that did not help. I deleted my e-mail accounts and set them up from scratch, but that did not work either.

I gave up!

I have been eyeing Mozilla's Thunderbird for awhile. I have been very happy with Mozilla's web browser, Firefox, and figured that Thunderbird might serve me well, too. But, until now, I did not feel the need to switch e-mail software. The Entourage debacle finally pushed me over the brink.

I downloaded Thunderbird and had it up and running with all my e-mail accounts in about 30 minutes.

Whereas Entourage required that I switch accounts to send and receive e-mail in separate windows for each e-mail account, Thunderbird allows me to send and receive all my e-mail accounts' mail in the same window (I have separate folders set up to differentiate the accounts). Nice!

So far, I am very pleased with Thunderbird and wish I had made the switch earlier!

iPhone: not for me, but....

Despite the problem with my Powerbook that Apple refuses to fix thus far, I still like Apple products and likely will buy Apple products in the future. However, as attractive as the iPhone seems to be, I will not buy one because I live on top of a mountain with spotty cell phone coverage.

The cell phone towers are located below my home and I assume they are optimized to provide coverage for the surrounding valleys where the majority of people live. I am lucky to get any cell phone coverage at all. (If I stand on one foot near the dining room window between 6 and 7:15 PM and the wind is not blowing above 5 MPH... ) So, I am not very confident that the iPhone will work any better at home.
Also, my WiFi and Powerbook provide more than adequate "mobile Internet" access at home.

Also, I hate phones. They are one of those "you can't live with them, you can't live without them" things. I dislike them so, that I don't even own a cell phone. My wife and daughter have one, but they are not for me.

However, that being said, I think the iPhone might shake things up and I direct you to the following blog post titled "Why the iPhone matters." If you are tired reading about the iPhone (I can't blame you), just read the end of the post: the last six paragraphs starting with the sub-heading "What do you mean? How could the iPhone change the larger phone business?"

Surfin': Don't Stop Commentin'

In this week's installment of Surfin', I write about Field Day and running Xastir, which is a Linux version of APRS, under Windows.

If you have any comments regarding what i wrote, leave your comments here.

By the way, Surfin’ is a weekly column published on ARRLWeb that finds and features Web sites that are related to Amateur Radio, specifically, and radio, in general. If you have any suggestions for Surfin’, please contact WA1LOU using the e-mail link to the right.

Surfin': Don't Stop Surfin'

“Don't Stop Surfin'” is the title of this week’s installment of Surfin‘. After you read it, you can post your comments, if any, back here.

By the way, Surfin’ is a weekly column published on ARRLWeb that finds and features Web sites that are related to Amateur Radio, specifically, and radio, in general. If you have any suggestions for Surfin’, please contact WA1LOU using the e-mail link to the right.

wizard dead

Don Herbert, television's Mr. Wizard, died yesterday. Like Sandy Becker, Bob Keeshan, and some other television personalities of the late 1950s and early 1960s, he was a virtual friend of mine and I mourn his passing.

morning visitor identified

After doing some research, it seems that my Saturday morning visitor is an Eastern Box Turtle or Terrapene carolina carolina and he is a female and not a male.

According to this web page, my visitor is a rarity because it's normal habitat is "coastal regions and river valleys, rarely going above 500’ altitude." I encountered my visitor at over 900' altitude.

closure overrated

I see that a lot of people are upset about the final episode of The Sopranos. The fans are upset because there was no closure. Boo, hoo!

Closure, schmosure! I thought the final episode was perfect.

Life goes on and most of the time, it goes on without closure. The only closure that you can count on is when you drop dead. So, forget about closure and like they said in one of my favorite movies, get busy living, or get busy dying.

morning visitor

Let me preface this by saying that I was born and raised in the city, so I am always amazed when I encounter any wildlife now that I live in the country.

This morning, while I was pulling weeds in front of the house, my weed removal revealed a round object about 8 inches in diameter. My first thought was that it was a squash, but then I realized it was a turtle with its head and legs pulled in.

I gave the turtle some space and continued to pull weeds a few feet away. Eventually, he popped out his head and legs and sat there checking me out for about fifteen minutes. Then, he decided to hit the road and started walking away very slowly (at a turtle pace).

Forty-five minutes later, he had crossed most of the front yard, but he was heading toward the road and I was worried that one of the neighborhood maniacs might run him over. So, I picked him up and gently deposited him in the woods across the street.

Funny thing is that when I picked him up, he pulled in his head and legs as I expected, but what I did not expect is that as he pulled everything in, there was a whooshing sound just like in a cartoon.

iPhone APRS

Steve Dimse, K4HG, the brains behind findu.com, is planning to do a version of APRS for the iPhone. (That might push me over the brink to buy an iPhone myself!)

Here is what Steve posted this morning on the APRSSIG:

Just curious if anyone else will be getting an iPhone at the end of the month.

It seems that Steve Jobs backed off from the closed architecture he initially proposed, and rumors abound that Apple will release an SDK next week at their developer's conference. I'm an Apple developer, and I will be writing an APRS version to run on the iPhone if it is possible. Whether it is web based or APRS-IS based depends on what the SDK allows. One rumor is that the SDK will be a modification of Mac OS X widget, which does not allow access to ports to connect to the APRS IS stream, in which case a web app will be the only option.

If anyone gets an iPhone and wants to beta test whatever I develop email me privately.

Steve K4HG (steve@dimse.com)

Surfin': Where's Manned Spacecraft?

“Where's Manned Spacecraft” is the title of this week’s installment of Surfin‘. After you read it, you can post your comments, if any, back here.

By the way, Surfin’ is a weekly column published on ARRLWeb that finds and features Web sites that are related to Amateur Radio, specifically, and radio, in general. If you have any suggestions for Surfin’, please contact WA1LOU using the e-mail link to the right.

Surfin': Telling the Pacific Radio Story

“Telling the Pacific Radio Story” is the title of this week’s installment of Surfin‘. After you read it, you can post your comments, if any, back here.

By the way, Surfin’ is a weekly column published on ARRLWeb that finds and features Web sites that are related to Amateur Radio, specifically, and radio, in general. If you have any suggestions for Surfin’, please contact WA1LOU using the e-mail link to the right.