Surfin’: Hamming on the Cutting Edge

This week, Surfin’ visits the plans for the upcoming Digital Communications Conference (DCC).

5.72 inches

Since the early morning hours of Sunday until now, the WA1LOU weather station has recorded 5.72 inches of rain!

Surfin’: Send APRS Messages via HF PSK and GMSK

This week, Surfin’ looks at new HF APRS applications originating from the UK.

Surfin’: The 500 Club

This week, Surfin’ considers the previous 499 installments of Surfin’.

Google-Verizon plan: Why you should worry

Dan Gillmore blogs that “Ominous references to the ‘public Internet’ inescapably suggest something else entirely.”

Read the rest of the story here to find out why you should worry.

Hamming by Pinging

This week, Surfin’ suggests scattering signals during the Perseids meteor shower.

A Bear Sits In My Yard

In the early spring, evidence (a mangled suet holder and a pulled-down bird feeder) indicated that a bear had dined in my yard.

As I was getting ready to take a shower yesterday morning, Pumpkin Pie started barking while peering out the bedroom window that overlooks the bird feeder. I went to the window to see what was the matter and sitting on the ground in between my antenna tower and the bird feeder was a black bear.

He had already mangled and eaten the contents of the suet feeder, but the bird feeder is of the heavy metal variety, so he could not mangle it and had to snatch sunflower seeds out of the feeder with his tongue.

The bear had tags on his ears that indicated he was Number 49, who has been seen all over town this spring and summer. The local newspaper had an article about him just last week, which claimed he weighed about 200 pounds (he looked bigger than that to me).

He did not seem at all bothered by me or my family watching him for over 20 minutes. I stood about six feet away from him shooting photos and videos through the family room window and he could care less.

After he finished off all the sunflower seeds, he drank water out of the bird bath and ambled off into the woods heading in a northeasterly direction.