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Linux on the small

September 20th, 2008
Linksys Router

Linksys Router

A few weeks ago, Sarah and I attended an event that the University YMCA sponsors…Dump and Run.  The idea is that students who are moving out in the Spring can drop anything they don’t want at the Y, which is within walking distance of the dorms.  Volunteers sort the items and sell them again in the Fall when the students return.  Many universities have variations on this theme.

I picked-up a nice framing square for 50 cents, a corduroy jacket for five dollars, and a few other odds and ends.  But, the big jackpot was a Linksys WRTSL54GS router.  There was no price on it and no price for routers or networking equipment on the general Dump and Run pricing sheet.  The top and bottom covers had been removed.  So, I had no idea if it had been “repaired.”  I offered the guy at the table five bucks for it.  He seemed happy; I was happy.

I plugged the little box in at home and fired-up my computer.  I was greeted by Whiterussian 0.9 instead of the usual Linksys firmware.  Brilliant!  Although I’m a fairly experienced Linux user, I’d never worked with embedded Linux.  So, I read up on it.  Not knowing if the previous owner was trying to launder a box that had been used for criminal intent, I reflashed it with a more recent edition of OpenWRT.  This gave me a fresh slate to work with to boot.

I shot Scott, KA9FOX, who hosts this site, a note about setting up a subdomain to use with router.  He suggested that the easiest way to do this would be to setup a free domain with dynDNS and then create a DNS CNAME record for home.k8gu.com that pointed at that domain.  Brilliant again!

One of the nice things about the WRTSL54GS is that has a USB port.  So, you can attach mass storage devices to it.  I’ve attached a 128-Mb jump drive that seems to work just fine.  But, I plan to do something semi-permanent at some point in the future.  There is a set of pads for a second USB port on the board, which are rumored to be hot.  I have contemplated hard-wiring an SD-card reader into that port to make a complete package.   Did I mention that I’m also using this as a wireless access point?  It’s great for the power misers out there.  It doesn’t quite have the umph to run SQL, as far as I know.  So, it wouldn’t be too useful for a self-hosted blog.  But, it seems very capable…  I’m already looking for another one; but, I doubt I’ll get that kind of deal anytime soon.

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Welcome to the new site

August 12th, 2008

I’ve decided to redo the site again. I haven’t managed to get my old WordPress blog posts imported into Joomla, yet. But, that will come. I have several options in that regard. Joomla is an excellent CMS as far as customization and ease-of-use. However, it’s not nearly as semantic-friendly as WordPress, which may prove to be its downfall for me. But, for now, that’s what I’m using. I plan to migrate the old articles from the original site into the Joomla format over time. I will symlink them to the old URL’s for bookmarks and search engines. Please bear with me as I rebuild…
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Independent?

May 6th, 2008

My father-in-law is an avid reader of Consumer Reports.  He got us a subscription a while back.  I frequently let Sarah read and summarize new issues.  But, a new issue arrived today touting their latest computer evaluations.  I was compelled to read it.  By the way, the MacBook and the ThinkPad still top the list of laptops.  At least someone agrees with my sentiments there.

As the son of an physicist who used to do performance testing for a major home appliance manufacturer that was not always treated favorably by CR, I have a healthy skepticism for the reviews.  (It’s very easy to design experiments that favor certain outcomes.)  Although, they frequently tend to bear-out my own recommendations and choices upon things I consider myself an expert about.

But, I digress.  In the February 2008 issue, they spent some time on investments.  One of the investments they recommended avoiding was an annuity.  In the latest (June 2008) issue, an advertisement touts a “Consumer’s Union Annuity.”  I didn’t bother to read the details, though.  It seems that an investment in CR‘s parent company is fine, despite the earlier discouragement.  Ok, so this is a relatively minor inconsistency.  But, it never hurts to know what influence a buck has…

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Repairing the micro Cluster

May 3rd, 2008

Airglow Cluster

Last summer, with the help of a fellow graduate student, I retrieved some old computers from the dorms to build a small cluster.  Total cost: $100.  Five of the machines had Maxtor DiamondMax 8 40-gB drives in them.  All five failed over the past few months.  For $200, I could replace them with new drives.  But, first I called surplus and ended up with a smattering of used drives with capacities of 20 and 40 gB. Three hours later, we were up and running again.  I’m sure they’ll get plenty of use as the ISEA deadline closes in…

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Repairs and junk…

April 13th, 2008

One of the curses of attempting (I say ‘attempting’ because I’m mostly a failure) to be a “sustainable consumer” of electronics and appliances is the inevitable repairs.  My venerable desktop PC of 8.5 years (known affectionately by it’s hostname “sakhalin”) is finally showing its age.  It has trouble finding the boot drive from time to time.  The “A radio” TS-930S doesn’t transmit on SSB anymore (this is a long-standing problem I have yet to diagnose), which is unfortunate because it has the roofing filter and Inrad SSB filters.  The power nozzle for our Hoover canister vacuum cleaner needs an agitator belt.  I need to find a local vacuum repair shop because none of the big stores carry the right size.  I think Sarah would be just as happy to replace it with an upright.  But, the canister still works!  I wrecked the airplane a couple of weeks ago when the weather was not quite nice enough to be flying it.  Fortunately, I have $3 worth of MacGuyver parts and epoxy that should be sufficient to make that repair.  The wind broke one of the wires on my open-wire 80-meter dipole.  (Finally, I reached the point of “if it stayed up last winter it’s not big enough.”  The proof is in the performance, too.)

I’ll probably get the airplane and the antenna fixed yet this afternoon.  The other problems are more long-standing.  The desktop PC isn’t really necessary, especially since Sarah will be getting a laptop with her new job.  So, I really probably could let it go.  I still have the Pentium 166 that I bummed off of Dad for a contesting computer.  It’s working great.  But, do I unload the newer, superior computer that’s flaky?  I have been tempted to dump the 166.  I should try a new hard drive in sakhalin.  Then there’s Sarah’s desktop…I can count on one hand the number of times it’s been turned on since we got married and I was the one using it!  I’m holding onto Alan’s PowerBook because it’s the only place I have Adobe CS2.  And, I have the ThinkPad “contesting laptop” that Ryan gave me when I got married…  I guess if I weren’t such a tightwad and Mac-addict, I wouldn’t have this problem!  No more junk!

We have five CRT’s in the house…two Dell 19″ Trinitrons on my desk, Sarah’s 17″ un-Trinitron Dell, my oscilloscope, and the TV.  I’m not planning to replace the ‘scope or the TV anytime soon.  So, I guess it’s the computers are the ones that will have to go…I just can’t let go of my junk…  And, I went out and bought a new camera…sigh.

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TLF on the Mac

February 24th, 2008

Last Sunday night, I hacked PA0R’s TLF Linux contest logging software to build on the Mac.  I tried it once before without much luck.  But, this time it seemed work much better.  If anyone is interested in a REAL contest logging package for the Mac, this might be it.  I’m going to try to get it going with a WKUSB at some point.  If you’re interested, shoot me a note.

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Perl

January 28th, 2008

My wife, Sarah, is a librarian. As she is fond of saying, she seems to start a career move with one idea in mind and end up doing something completely different. For example, a Biology/Education degree from undergrad became the foundation for a Library (and Information) Science Master’s degree with emphasis on young-adult librarianship. But, the combination of the MSLIS, a Biology degree, and the circumstances of my education (a big one), landed her a job as a “Science and Electronic Resources” librarian at a small college. Fascinating…but, what does this have to do with Perl?

One day when she was still a student, I casually mentioned that I had written a Perl script to fly through an enormous heap of data at work. “You know Perl?! We just talked about it in class today.” She thought it sounded pretty useful. I agreed. The things I do often lend themselves to what she does and vice versa. Time passed. They taught her some ASP.net/Visual Basic at the Engineering Library when she was a graduate assistant there.

Last Thursday, I was collecting my things to leave the office and my phone rang. It was Sarah. “So, my boss wants to know pricing information for 30,000 journals by the end of next month. My student worker is already tired and she hasn’t looked-up more than a few. All of the prices are in the same database. Do you think you could do that with Visual Basic?” I agreed that you probably could; but, I suggested that Perl might be better. She provided a list of subscriptions and we whipped up a quick script to do the job. Most of the time was spent trying to deal with the subscription-only nature of the database web site and managing the associated cookies. I’m sure this was a violation of a ToS somewhere… We let the script run when we went to bed…nothing like having a computer do your work for you while you’re asleep! As far as I can tell, it got every price that was provided…her boss owes me a pizza now.

She set a goal to start learning Perl over the weekend. On Saturday night, we went to a coffee shop on campus with laptops and did some more Perl lessons. (I used to poke fun at people whose dates consisted of writing code together.) She commented that it was “just like Visual Basic” but with different syntax. I’ve got a budding programmer on my hands…excellent (tent hands like Mr. Burns)… I also started teaching her emacs, which should further enhance that!

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NAQP and LoTW

January 16th, 2008

I entered the North American QSO Party CW Contest somewhat seriously for only the second time last Saturday.  I’m pretty happy with the results, especially considering that this score is 50% higher than my claimed score the last time.  I ended up with only 9.5 hours due to the 160 antenna situation.

Summary:
Band QSOs Mults
-------------------
160: 33 20
80: 279 47
40: 261 51
20: 66 29
15: 17 5
10: 1 1
-------------------
Total: 657 153 Total Score = 100,521

Ten and fifteen meters stunk…no big surprise here for this part of the solar cycle.  Although, I would liked to have done better on fifteen.  I took my off times (an hour each time) during the second and sixth hours of the contest.  I don’t know if I would do it that way again;  I had a really good run on 40 during the day.  I tried to work the second radio then; but, I haven’t mastered that, yet.  The first hour had the worst (< 60) rate.  I did much better after that.  My totals on 40 and 80 are within striking distance of the big guys like W9RE.  But, I just don’t have the firepower on the high bands nor the ears on 160 to do well there.  Of course, there’s still the whole skill problem, too…

Topband was a disappointment…I was hoping for about 40 multipliers and 100 QSOs.  I hauled an MFJ tuner up on the roof late in the contest to load-up the 80-meter dipole and feeder against a single elevated radial on 160 since I still don’t have that automated.  That could be a tonight project.  The noise on 160 on the vertical was 10-15 dB over S9.  Those 33 contacts were fought hard by me.  I need some RX antennas.  I talked to K9AN yesterday.  He suggested a K9AY loop.  I’m thinking about active verticals with a variable phasing combiner…less footprint.  We talked about pre-amps.  He wants to measure the NF of whatever I come up with out of J310’s from my junk box.

I requested a new LoTW certificate this morning since mine expired in January 2006.  Hehe…oops.  They protect your QSO integrity like Fort Knox!  In fact, they probably have a better idea of who you are than most credit bureaus.  I need to go through my logs tonight and clean everything up to get ready.  It sure beats QSLing, though…  I’m sure I’ll make a bunch of people happy in a few weeks.

Also came up with a great SDR idea yesterday that could be my new secret weapon.  It should be pretty easy to do, too.  No more on that until I get one working…

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Ubuntu: Taking care of business

January 2nd, 2008

So, I posted an old laptop I have laying around on Craigslist.  While I was there, I checked out the Linux forum for kicks.  Someone posted something to the effect of “using Ubuntu doesn’t make you a Linux user.”  Following that were comments about “build it yourself” and “real Linux users use Slackware.”  This is the reason Linux is only free if your time is worthless.  I personally have better things to do with my life than to be endlessly building this and that and satisfying dependencies.  I’ve been a Linux user for about half its young life (the first kernel I built was 2.0.36)…and I think Ubuntu is the greatest thing to hit Linux since OpenSSH.  Like Mac OS X, it’s Unix-like without the fuss.  So, go on being snobs…I’ll be getting  my work done.

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