Author: Russ Woodman

LHS Show Notes #021

Posted on by Russ Woodman

OSCON 2009 Update #2 by Russ, K5TUX

Wednesday:

Thursday:

Friday:

  • "The Art of Klingon Programming" presented by Paul Fenwick (Perl Training Australia)
    • A hysterical talk about programming Perl in the Klingon language. (Unfortunately, we cannot find a link to the slides. -Ed.)
  • Walking tour of The Tech Museum of Innovation.
    • A behind the scenes look at the development of the museum exhibits. All of the technology used for the exhibits was developed with open source tools.

LHS Show Notes #020

Posted on by Russ Woodman

Contributors:

  • Adrian, M0GLJ/VK2BAC reinstalled Ubuntu on his Asus Eee PC 701SD, and wondered if there was a logging program that worked well on the small screen.
  • Paul, no callsign given, asks for a link to Shackbox Linux.
  • Bill, KA9WKA, offered a review of Linux Mint 7.
  • Paul Shirey writes to ask about the upcoming Windows 7.
  • Ray, KO4RB, submits his comments praising Linux Mint and the podcast.

Announcements:

  • Resonant Frequency now has a page at Facebook. Look for Resonant Frequency Podcast
  • More about spam.

Discussion:

  • Linux Mint 7 with guest Bill, KA9WKA.   We talk about Linux Mint 7, CentOS, various other distributions, why we like, or dislike, Linux Mint, and a few of the problems encountered.
  • Russ talks about trying Linux Mint on his 10" Eee PC.  He installed it via Pendrivelinux.  He had a problem with the wireless driver, but a kernel upgrade and a minor configuration change fixed that. The wired Ethernet interface did not work.  Compiz works, but you probably wouldn't want to run it all the time on a netbook.  Some of the power-saving features don't work.
  • Richard describes his experience with a wireless network intrusion.  Once recovered, he tried to install Mint on one of his machines, but although the live CD ran fine, and the install went well, the machine would hang while loading the desktop.  He suspects it's a problem with the hardware.  Otherwise, he likes Linux Mint.  Our recommendation for first-time Linux users: try Linux Mint.
  • Overall, Russ likes it too, but has issues with his web camera, primarily due to changes to the kernel and Video for Linux, v.2.  To fix it, he had to install Linux Mint 5, instead of 7.    For some cameras, you can pipe a V4L2 camera through V4L virtual video device.  Your camera has to provide pixel format YUV420P.  If that's the case, the Flashcam project might help. YMMV
  • Mojito

Music:

LHS Episode #027: Where Are My Meds?

Posted on by Russ Woodman

haarpWe have topped 40,000 downloads! Thanks go out to all of our listeners and live webcast attendees for making Linux in the HAM Shack as popular as it is. Give yourselves a huge round of applause. We're also well on our way to our donation goal of $750 so we can buy booth space and Internet access at the Dayton Hamvention in Dayton, Ohio, in May of 2010. Thank you for all of your donations. Please keep them coming as you're able to send them in!

In this episode, we address listener feedback and comments, and then in a burst of inspiration invite listeners from the chat room to come onto the program for a lively and very fun roundtable discussion. Topics were varied, from portable antenna design, to life without Red Bull; from the HAARP VLF array in Alaska to D-STAR, PACTOR and other digital ham radio communication modes. And since I was on meds and Richard was off his, things got a little crazy towards the end.

We hope you enjoy this episode of Linux in the HAM Shack. Please leave us comments or questions on the web site or via voice mail at 888-455-0305. And send your best wishes to Bill, KA9WKA, who has taken on the responsibility of getting LHS's show notes out in a timely fashion. Thanks, Bill. You're a lifesaver!

73 de Russ, K5TUX

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

LHS Show Notes #018

Posted on by Russ Woodman

Contributors:

  • George, N0JRJ, really likes the podcasts and would like to participate in the live show.  (Just show up! -Ed.)  He also agrees with Richard that it can take a long time to amass the equipment for a radio station, and that we need to foster new Elmers.
  • Walter, KV6M, made a donation to the podcast.  Thank-you!
  • Rodzilla, no call yet, is looking forward to getting his license and a Yaesu FT-8800.  He would like remote control software for the FT-8800, and wants to know if the programming software runs under Wine in Linux.
  • K6*** provided instructions for compiling fldigi under Ubuntu Linux 9.10 X64.
  • The Princeton Ham Radio Club mentioned the LHS podcast on their website.  That's Princeton, KY.

Announcements:

Links and Notes:

  • Richard talks about his experience with the Linux Cranks (Stay clear of the monorail!)  (ogg format, explicit)
  • Hacker Public Radio has asked Richard and Russ to do a couple segments.
  • Richard rants about receiving spam via Twitter.
  • We discuss "Windows 7 is the same as Ubuntu" .
  • Firefox addons useful for ham radio operators.
    • AE7Q has tools to add callsign and grid square lookups to your Firefox search engine tool bar (Scroll down to the pink boxes on the lower right corner of the page. -Ed.)
    • Mozilla has a QRZ.com addon.
    • There is also a plugin to search the ARRL Callsign database.
    • N0HR has Propfire, a Firefox plugin for propagation information.
    • N0HR also offers PropStats, which provides propagation statistics for your website. https://www.n0hr.com/propstats.htm
    • haminfobar from John, G0DPC.
    • hamlinks toolbar from N0HR.
    • Take a look at VA3STL's weblog (October 5, 2008 entry).
    • Not actually ham radio related, but a couple of cool 3D plugins:  FoxTab lets you browse your Firefox tabs in a 3D fashion, and Cooliris allows you to browse your image files in a similar way.
    • Synergy allows you to share a single mouse and keyboard between multiple computers, with just software and your existing network.    There are several configuration tools, such as QuickSynergy for Linux or OS-X, another Mac OS X Synergy GUI, and SynergyKM.
  • Xirc is a good IRC client program.  There are versions for Linux, OS X, and Windows.

Conclusion:

Contact Richard via:

Email: kb5jbv@blacksparrowmedia.com
Twitter: twitter.com/kb5jbv
Web: lhsinfo.org
Forums at blacksparrowmedia.com

Contact Russ via:

Email: k5tux@blacksparrowmedia.com
Twitter.com/jrwoodman

Music: