I’ve mentioned before the GAISS project (here and here). It wasn’t in the original plan, but we are now receiving the MAP27 information from the ‘base’ radio, and making them available for a small conversion appplication that re-transmits them on the National APRS frequency of 144.800Mhz. This allows us to leverage the already existing APRS infrastructure in place to get our ‘position packets’ to go around corners where there is no existing RF path.
Our GAISS GUI will then be able to pluck the relevant data from the APRS data stream and plot the positions of the SEMRA personnel that are out walking for the event. Delighted as we are to have this much working (and that we will have something to show at the Galtee Walking Festival), we are still a long way of a ‘finished’ prototype.
Dxtuners has closed. I had gotten used to using it when travelling to keep an eye on things ‘back home’.
Last weekend I came across this post by Steve Haigh. His updated version of pcrd compiled fine on my ubuntu machine (though I did fix one small mistake).
That got me thinking, so I asked a few ‘geeks’ in work for solutions. It was suggested that controlling it over IRC would be the fastest way of doing it requiring mimimum effort on my part.
Well I think they were right, all of about 8 lines of tcl and its working again. Log in to #frequencydb on zirc and say hello.
Parallels is very very impressive. I’ve been using it since before christmas to boot custom Ubuntu CD’s for the Enable project here in work (on my MacBook Pro). I recently wanted to try out Radio Mobile for Radio System performance analysis. So the guys in work supplied me with a copy Windows XP and off I went.
It was a pretty simple install, then, once it was up and running, I installed the Parallels Tools as instructed, and then Radio Mobile itself. The virtual machine takes about 25 seconds to boot and less than 20 to shut down and, in operation, its very responsive. To quote Ronseal, It “Does exactly what it says on the tin”.
I’ve had the pleasure to receive a new MacBook Pro for work, though I wasn’t particularly looking forward to the task of migrating all my data. I have to say Apple’s Setup Assistant has to be one of the most useful pieces of software ever! So far, the only casualty has been xchat. I remembered Bernard mentioned Babbel a while back, so I’ll give that a whirl instead.
Back up and running in less than 2 hours, thank you Apple!
Random thoughts — Mostly Amateur Radio, Satellite, Linux or Work related.
