Radio Free Carrabelle

Saturday was a day at the Carrabelle Riverfront Festival (quick article at The Times), working a ham radio (the FTM-7250D) at the Franklin County Emergency Management booth.  It was enjoyable, in a low-key way.  Got to catch up with some friends, eat interesting foods, and talk about and (a little) on the radio, got to visit and help out occasionally at nearby booths too.  A day well spent.  So what's this "Radio Free" business, besides a slightly catchy-sounding title?  Free power, that's all – note the solar panel on the green pack in the middle background.  It makes for a visually more interesting booth, even if the battery on the table would've served for the entire day.

Really, it was an easy setup with nothing more than a daypack of gear, including the sunscreen.

OK, after that you deserve a song:

XC is Suddenly Cool Again

After a decade of 6"-8" travel rolling sofa trail bikes, suddenly cross-country seems to be getting re-discovered.  Behold, article at Singletracks mag: 

It's an Olympic Year, Which Means XC Mountain Bikes are Getting Sexy Again

I really, really dig that tire in the first picture.  That on the back and some medium knobs up front just look like an extra 10% speed.

But of course we already knew all about how sexy XC mountain bikes really are.

BTW, Singletracks online mag is a pretty good mountain bike resource.  It doesn't quite have the down-home funk of 90's Dirt Rag, but hell, what does?  Seems to be one of the better thing going these days.

It's Been a While...

... since I've had a good Mustang post.  Here we go!

The Value of Education vs. Training

Illustrated well over at yesterday's Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal web comic.

Survey Markers, Magnetic Declination Drift, and Border Disputes

Yesterday's xkcd comic dragged up memories of a small fence line discussion last year:

The latest team of surveyors in my neighborhood had used the 1988 local declination value and neglected to adjust for the changes over the intervening 35 years.  This amounted to about 3.5 degrees, which put the buildings, sidewalks, and even city streets at considerable odds with their new maps.  Double check figures?  Nah.  Why bother, the magic computer box on the instrument sed whut it sed.  All of those century-old buildings and two-century old streets were clearly in error.  So the new property lines ran through buildings, carving off a few feet here and there to new owners.

Glad that I had a 65 year old survey map of my place, back when people did math and double-checked it.  Strange how that map was in agreement with, well, reality.

The Ultimate Captcha

These things are getting more and more involved.  I got this lulu this morning:

OK, not terrible, but the previous screen (which I unfortunately did not capture) had more of vague tigers-in-a-foggy-jungle images, in much the same way as the lower-left tractor image.  I actually hade to squint at it for a moment.

But let's stop messing around with these simple image captchas and move on to Things That Only Humans Can Truly Do.  For example,

Make the following indeterminate quantum state collapse into a determinate reality.

The cat is:

[ ] Alive

[ ] Dead

Well, that's certainly a 100% lock on the whole  captcha thing.  Unfortunately the actual hardware/software implementation could be a little tricky.  Not to mention that we'd need an unreasonably large supply of surplus cats.

Teaching the Ham General License Class

Teaching's keeping me busy these next couple of weeks, so blogging may be sporadic.  In the meantime, here's a link to a 2017 post on The Quick & Dirty way to Tech & General License for people with a STEM background.  Really, if I could pull this off while recovering from sinus surgery, you can too.  Also, here's a link to a local club's testing sign-up & what-to-bring page.  Even if you're not on the Forgotten Coast or somewhere in Area X, odds are that the overall procedure will be similar in your locale so it's worth a look.

The band chart.  No, this won't all be on the test, but you will have to show some ability to navigate it.  Click here for the full-res version in pdf.

And That Was the Eclipse That Was

I was driving through Port St. Joe at the peak of coverage here in NW FL and was down to a half-tank, so I used that as an excuse to pull over and observe.  Lacing fingers together to make a crude pinhole gave a decent image on a smooth patch of the gas station's pavement.  At least, it was enough to see a chunk taken out of the image of the Sun, maybe 70%.  Though nowhere near the totality path, I'd still have felt bad if I hadn't at least made that little effort.

Coming out of the gas station (bathroom & caffeine stop), there was a dood hanging out in the gloom outside.  We spoke, he said he'd looked straight at it anyway.  I showed him the improvised pinhole trick and projected a pretty clear image on the sidewalk, still showing a hefty chunk out of the image.  He looked at me uncomprehendingly.  All I could think to say was "Hey, science.  Don't worry too much about it."  Then I popped open my can o' caffeine, got in my car, and headed for home.

Rockin' the Eclipse with a WB-57 Canberra

Article at Newspeak: Solar Eclipse to Be Chased by NASA Jet Planes

Article at the BBC: What it feels like to fly through a solar eclipse

The weather's always clear at 50,000 feet.

That's a telescope in the nose.  I hope.

More on the WB-57 Canberra and why NASA still uses them at the BBC.

As a side-trip, it is interesting to note how the Canberra was developed from the WWII Mosquito light bomber, which was in turn developed form a 1930's air racer, the DH.88 Comet.  Here, have some three-views of each in turn:

Grandaddy DH.88 Comet

Daddy Mosquito

And the 80yo kid, the B-57 Canberra.  Heavily modified for NASA of course.

All this should come as little surprise, since the Mosquito was the proto-communication satellite.  Two big engines, giant wings, room for fuel, and squeeze in a small crew – amazing what you can do starting with those basics.

Bob Dylan Plays New Orleans

Article over at the Times-Picayune

The 82-year-old Bob Dylan's New Orleans concert was extremely Bob Dylan-ish

As well it should be.  Wish I'd been there.  The cell phone treatment is a good idea, deserves emulation.

Monkey Business on April Fool's Day

Here, over at Tam's blog.

I did not have "monkeys, familiar with firearms, take over a medium-small Thai city, with a side-order of Shakespeare" on my 2024 bingo card.

ps: As if on cue, this later showed up after I'd posted the previous:

Think I'll stay close to home for a few days, until this April Fools fever has passed.