Tag: Linux Journal

Show Notes #082

Posted on by Russ Woodman

Introduction:

Announcements:

  • The Black Sparrow Media Mobile App for iPhone/iPad and Android has been updated. You can now listen to all of the old episodes, as well as new ones, via the app. wAVEgUIDES episodes are now included, as well. All streaming content is now available for iPad/iPhone. Please download and enjoy. It's at the Google Play marketplace, as well as via the Black Sparrow Media website, and it's still free!
  • The LHS Hamvention fund drive was a success! LHS will be at Dayton Hamvention 2012, May 18-20, in the North Hall of the Hara Arena in booth 131, the same place as last year.
  • Russ fixed a website bug that may have been causing some visitors to see the Black Sparrow Media site when surfing to LHS. Thanks to John, EI7IG, for pointing it out.
  • Please sign up for the LHS mailing list at https://lists.blacksparrowmedia.net/mailman/listinfo.
  • Please join the LHS subreddit and contribute show topic ideas, news of interest to our listeners, or just about anything else.
  • Please tell your friends about the show.

Topics:

  • Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU, in his recent Surfin' column on the ARRL website, recommends open source Apache OpenOffice and the desktop publishing software Scribus. Note, LibreOffice is a fork of OpenOffice and is also quite functional. Both offer word processing, spreadsheets, database and presentations. Scribus may have a steep learning curve, but it's a very powerful program. Easy tasks are easy to accomplish. Complex projects may take more effort to learn. Also note that many open source programs, like OpenOffice, Libre Office and Scribus, are available for Windows, OS X, as well as Linux.
  • Take a look at the ham radio section at Linux Journal which also has links to their Ham Shack forum.
  • Richard discovered several open source ham radio applications at Sourceforge: ircDDB_gateway, CQiNET, phppredict, contest loggers, fldigi, paclink-unix, OpenMOR, software for SDR radios, Ham Radio Net Logger, and more. So, don't just look in your distributions repositories for applications. You may have to compile the programs from SourceForge yourself, but it may be worth the trouble.
  • Finally, a reminder to visit KE2YK's Random Oscillations website.
  • An overview of ham radio apps for Android phones, available at the Android market, aka Google Play:
    • Morse Code apps:
      • Morse Decoder ($4.99)
      • Morse Code Reader (Free)
      • Morse Trainer Lite (Free)
      • Morse Trainer ($2.99)
      • Morse Code Trainer (Free)
      • Morse Code Keyboard (Free)
      • Morse Code Teacher ($3.99)
    • QSO Logging:
      • Amateur Radio Call Log (Free)
      • HamLog ($0.99)
      • Hamroid Free (Free)
      • Hamroid ($6.53)
    • Miscellaneous:
      • QSY (Free)
      • DroidPSK ($4.99)
      • DXCluster ($2.49)
      • DTMF ($2.49)
      • Echolink (Free)
    • A few more from Bill:
      • APRS Viewer (Free)
      • Ham Radio Tools (Free)
      • Who Is Calling Me? (Free)

Feedback:

  • Ronny, K4RJJ, regrets that he won't be able to act as the LHS ambassador at the Knoxville hamfest. If you'd like to be our representative at the Knoxville, or any other event, please contact us via the Ambassador link on the website.
  • Roy, KK4ATD, reiterates how much fun it is to be an LHS ambassador.
  • Chris, K4FH, says he offers a presentation at club meetings he calls Linux in the Ham Shack. He's hoping Richard or Russ has some material they can share.

Contact Info:

  • Contact Richard at kb5jbv@gmail.com, Russ at k5tux@lhspodcast.info, or both at the same time at info@lhspodcast.info.
  • Listen to the live stream every other Tuesday at 8:00pm Central time. Check the LHS web site for dates.
  • Leave us a voice mail at 1-909-LHS-SHOW (1-909-547-7469), or record an introduction to the podcast.
  • Sign up for the LHS mailing list.
  • Sign up for the MAGNetcon mailing list.
  • LHS merchandise is available at the Merch link on Web site. Check out the Badgerwear or buy one of the other LHS-branded items at PrintFection.com/lhs or Cafe Press. Thanks!
  • Thanks to Dave from Gamma Leonis for the theme music.

Music:

  • "Gunpowder Chant" by Diablo Swing Orchestra from the album "The Butcher's Ballroom," courtesy of Jamendo.
  • "L.E.O." by Oleg Serkov from the album "Epoch Symbol," courtesy of Jamendo.

LHS Show Notes #031

Posted on by Russ Woodman

Contributors:

  • Last episode we talked about WSPR. Eddie Bennett, G3ZJO, wrote an article about running WSPR under Linux, and that article is available on the LHS website. He has several other blog pages, too.
  • Don, WS4E, wrote that he recently acquired an iPhone and was interested to see that there is a Ustream app for it, but the app only plays pre-approved streams. He wonders if the LHS and RF podcasts will be available on Ustream. Russ did contact them, and LHS is now available on the Ustream iPhone application.
  • We received a pingback from Ben, VK5JFK, to the article on the LHS website, Linux Mint 7 - Refreshing
  • Paul, KC9QYB, of teenradiojourney.com, writes about a problem he was having with a file server. They recently upgraded it to the latest version of Ubuntu server, on a separate partition. He wonders how he can recover the data from the other drives and partitions. Russ answers. Essentially:
    1. Identify the "old" drive device name. You can search through the results of the dmesg command to see which devices are detected at boot. Let's assume your old data is on drive /dev/hda1.
    2. Create a directory in the /mnt directory on your new drive (or partition) to serve as the mount point. We'll call it root: 
      mkdir /mnt/root
    3. Mount the old drive: 
      mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/root
    4. Now you can copy or move files from the old drive at /mnt/root to the new drive.
    5. Similarly, you can create other directories in /mnt for other partitions, such as /var, /usr, /home, or whatever you might need.
  • A Twitter mention from timls about listening to the podcast.

Announcements:

  • We received a donation from Bill, NF9D, to help send Linux in the Ham Shack to the Dayton Hamvention in 2010. Thanks, Bill!

Links and Notes:

  • Interview with David Lane, KG4GIY, and Shawn Powers of Linux Journal. Shawn is the Associate Editor and David is a contributing author, blogger, member of the Reader Advisory Board, and amateur radio operator. The January, 2010 issue of Linux Journal is devoted to amateur radio topics.
  • The very first issue of Linux Journal is available online, and also contained an article about ham radio.
  • David's blog post about ereaders.
  • David is also the Emergency Coordinator and RACES officer for Prince William Cty, VA. David discusses the use of Linux in emergency communications.
  • Mentioned in the chat room: David Freese, W1HKJ, the author of fldigi, also has NBEMS, Narrow Band Emergency Messaging System, for Linux.
  • The group discusses how packet radio networks operate.
  • This leads to a discussion of what, if any, types of encryption are allowed in amateur radio transmissions.
  • Linux Journal has their "virtual ham shack" at https://www.linuxjournal.com/ham/, which includes a forum. David has recently started a thread there about software-defined radios.
  • The panel discusses what appears to be an increase in ham radio software for the Linux community.
  • Russ asks the panel their opinion about the new evil empire, Google, and specifically Google Wave and Google Voice.
  • What about Google DNS? https://code.google.com/speed/public-dns/ (The panel mentions "Cricket's book", which is DNS and BIND, by Paul Albitz and Cricket Liu, published by O'Reilly.)
  • With Oracle's purchase of Sun, what will happen to MySQL?
  • Look for David at the Linux Journal chatroom on freenode IRC, in the #linuxjournal channel.
  • Check out the Linux Journal store, too.

Music:

  • "Let's Get It Started" by Oh No Not Stereo from the album "003"
  • "Miss America" by Beyond 7 from the album "Revelations Per Minute"

LHS Episode #031: Linux Journal Invasion

Posted on by Russ Woodman

Linux in the HAM Shack has arrived in 2010! It's hard to believe that 2009 is over already. We've have so much fun putting together the podcast for everyone, the time has literally flown by. Soon it will be time for the snow to melt, the world to turn green once again, and for LHS to travel to Dayton, OH for the 2010 Hamvention in May. We're so ready we can almost taste it.

In this episode, we had the honor of interviewing two prominent figures from Linux Journal magazine. David Lane, KG4GIY, is the magazine's eminent blogger and ham radio advocate. He is a large part of the reason the January 2010 issue of LJ is all about amateur radio. Shawn Powers is the magazine's associate editor, which gives him the dubious honor of being a guest on our show. He's the go-to guy when the editor, publisher and just about everyone else needs something done. We have to say we were greatly honored to have the LJ folks join us, and we sure hope we haven't scared them off so they'll come back and talk with us in the future.

Hope everyone is having a fantastic 2010 so far, and thanks for downloading LHS in the new year. And if you have a couple of dollars leftover from holiday binging, please drop us a donation as the deadline for acquiring a booth in Dayton is coming up fast. And remember, we appreciate our listeners, each and every one. Thank you!

73 de Russ and Richard

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

LHS Show Notes #029

Posted on by Russ Woodman

Recorded on December 8th, the anniversary of the assassination of John Lennon.

Contributors:

  • Matt, KC8BEW, tells us about a new Linux forum at Linux Journal for amateur radio topics.  The January, 2010 issue of Linux Journal has several amateur radio related articles.  Add  https://www.linuxjournal.com/ham to your bookmarks.  Look for an interview with a couple folks from Linux Journal on the episode to be recorded on January 5, 2010.  And thanks to Kent, VE4KEH, for the plug in the forum over there.
  • Kent, VE4KEH, sent in an audio segment, to be included later in this episode.  If you'd like to submit an audio segment, please send it in .ogg or .mp3 format, if possible.
  • Another message from Kent suggests a topic for a future show about installing distros from live .iso files to a flash drive with persistence.  (Check out the Pen Drive Linux site.)
  • Rich, KD0BJT, and his son Brady, KD0BJS, have started their own podcast, called Low SWR.
  • A WordPress blog by Gary, KE2YK, references an article by Martin, AA6E, about Linux and amateur radio.
  • The Fresh Ubuntu podcast website has linked to the LHS website.  They're also on Freenode IRC at #freshubuntu.
  • The Bluff County DX Association of LaCrosse, WI linked to the LHS website.  Thanks!
  • Ben, VK5JFK, left a comment on Bill's review of Linux Mint 7 asking if Xastir runs under Linux Mint.  Yes, it does, and I've posted an article on the website about it.
  • Ed, KC5NT, writes to say he enjoys the podcast and is 100% Linux in the ham shack.  He describes his radio activities and made a donation to the fund to send LHS to Dayton in 2010.  Thanks, Ed!
  • Jason, NT7S, has a link to LHS in his blog, Ripples in the Ether.
  • Richard sent some feedback to the Going Linux podcast and got mentioned in episode 86.
  • The technet.147120.com blog also linked to LHS. They hold an on-air technical net in the Orlando, FL area on Wednesday nights on the 147.120 repeater (103.5 Hz PL).

Announcements:

  • Donations: We received donations from: Ed KC5NT, Bill KA9WKA, Doug N6LMX, John EI7IG, and Walter WN3LIF.  Thank you all for your very generous donations.  It looks like we're well on the way to sending Russ and Richard to Dayton in 2010.
  • Thanks, again, to Dave and John of Gamma Leonis for the theme music for the show.  www.gammaleonis.com

Links and Notes:

Music:

  • "Fade Your Heat" by Val Davis from the album "Immortal"
  • "Didn't I?" by Shane Jackman from the album "Equilibrium"