Cheap Coffee Reviewed

Over at youtube/buzzfeed.  H/T to the Darling Daughter for sending the link.

Bonus: cheap beer reviewed by a wine expert.

Two New Bands?

If you're here for the music, move along.  We're talking ham bands here.

The FCC has proposed two new bands for amateur use: 2200 and 630 meters.  Brother, that is low stuff, down below the AM broadcast band:

Right here, where the two red lines point.  BTW, the TV low band goes up near FM radio, not down by 30m.  What can you expect, I swiped the original image from a NASA site.

The actual frequency allocations are 135.7–137.8 and 472–479 kHz.  If approved, maximum allowed power will be 1 and 5 Watts respectively.  Those are very narrow bands and at very low power.  What's a ham going to do with those pathetic slices of the spectrum?  Experiment of course! Why, back in the 1920's, the HF spectrum was thought to be useless and so it was thrown to hams as a scrap, and they quickly discovered that it was good for world-wide communication.  So no doubt we'll also find some cool use for these LF and low-MF allocations.

If allocated.  We shall see.

Full article over at the ARRL web site.

Afterthought: Vertically polarized 2200 meter waves could have stunningly long paths across salt water.  A quick back-of-the-envelope calculation says that digital PSK31 signals could make the hop from New Orleans to Apalachicola, or Apalachicola down to Tampa on the proposed 1 Watt.  Challenge accepted.

BSL Makes the Top 10 List

Yeah, that's right, Bay St. Louis made culturetrip.com's "Ten Most Beautiful Towns in Mississippi."  Article and links at the Sea Coast Echo.  I can believe it, our fair city has come a long way since August 2005.  It felt like we'd pulled even with our pre-Katrina standard circa 2010, and with the opening of the marina and the revitalization of downtown we've that marker post way back in the rear-view mirror.

Synthetic Diesel: Just mix CO2, water, and energy...

... lots and lots of energy.  Here's the article at IBD.  Interesting read.  Now the 64 Euro question: Where to get the energy to synthesize the stuff?  Knowing how these things usually go, probably from heavily subsidized coal burning plants.

40's Vintage Music

I'm out the door to work momentarily, but here are a couple of interesting links to some vintage music:

Radio Casablanca, a pirate shortwave station, lit off over the weekend.  Here's an hour and a half recording of their broadcast at the SWLing Post.

In the comments at the SWLing Post, there was an interesting link to 1940's UK Radio.  A good bit more clear sound there.  Too bad the url initially reads as "1940 suk radio," because that more describes the state of radio in the 2010's.

Off to work.  Didn't want to let these weekend links slide by without mention.

Quote of the Day

Never worry about theory as long as the machinery does what it's supposed to do. -- R. A. Heinlein

Hrmmm.  Good practical advice, but also a good way to get blindsided.  I recall my graduate advisor saying something along the lines "If you don't really understand it, it WILL come back to bite you in the ass," and looking back, experience has confirmed this.  I guess that's the difference between engineering and physics.

Welcome to My World

xkcd permalink

Do you know how many programming classes most physicists take?  Just enough to be dangerous.  Do you know how much fun it is to plow through 35 year old physicist-generated Fortran?  Just enough to make the weekends well-earned.