WOW I HAVE SO MANY RADIO THINGS TO TALK ABOUT! There’s been lots rolling about inside my head recently, mostly related to radio. I’m doing lots of wee things in the exciting world of amateur radio to fill my time as summer hits. I’m focussing mostly on packet radio and digital modes, and have done various vaguely interesting things over the last month or two. TCP/IP over AX.25 This is a thing that happened with Iain / 2M0STB in mid march. Using our testbed setup of a Yaesu FT-7900 and FT-817, we invoked the magic of soundcard modems (Direwolf and Soundmodem) to make the magic of modern networking happen over a 1200 baud AFSK link. …

Having been curious for a while, I’ve decided it’s time to start properly playing in the world of packet radio. Not just APRS, though - that’s a ‘solved problem’, and quite simple to get a quick hang of. My main station radio that lives in the hackerspace is a Yaesu FT-7900, and it’s a lovely piece of kit. I’ve got a data cable with proper, separate PTT and audio out/in. It’s got a 9600baud mode as well, so hopefully I can get faster data once all of this has been set up. …

So I’ve been playing with info-beamer lots recently, as part of my attempts to relearn how to be a clever person. Having seen it at 31c3, I was curious how I could use it and how much work it was to make it display information. After reading the documentation, I’m really impressed with how easy it is to do seemingly clever things with. The base frames for displaying data are written in lua, which seems sensible and easy enough to read to enable hacking at. It’s also, I’ve been told, quick as fuck. The software itself has a server awaiting UDP on port 4444, and a defined way of importing that into the system. This is really neat - if you want to send data directly to it, and have new things appear on screen, it’s pretty easy to do. …

This was originally posted when I worked for Crossing Zebras under the name Hibbie as an internet spaceship columnist. It’s here for completeness of my writing. It feels like it’s been a long, long time since I was a new player. To be perfectly honest, I can’t remember why I joined the game, but my corporate history suggests I was a Fw4pper and then, after a typically short time, a 5punker. This was a forum I was on, so I must have heard about spaceships and joined. EVE was my first MMO, and I went in with no expectations. …

This was originally posted when I worked for Crossing Zebras under the name Hibbie as an internet spaceship columnist. It’s here for completeness of my writing. In large organisations it’s really easy to get lost. When there are thousands of people surrounding you, all talking constant shit, it’s difficult to see regular faces and make strong connections with anyone. EVE, at its core, is a social experience, and without friends the game is lonely, difficult to learn, and nearly impossible to succeed at. With this in mind, Goonfleet introduced Squadrons in 2006 – a method of subdividing the member base into smaller groups in order to give newbies and veterans an anchor within the corp. …