Flight Refueling Amateur Radio Society (FRARS) have just launched an experimental weblog to complement our popular website - http://www.frars.org.uk/.
I highly recommend booking the FRARS weblog which can be found @ http://frars.typepad.com/
Note: The blog is currently still being FRARS branded but is already in use.
I am pleased to report that I am now back blogging on typepad again. As I previously wrote about last year I was originally trialing typepad after my typepad subscription ran out I looked various alternatives to typepad but in the end decided that typepad does everything I need in terms of blogging whilst "letting someone else worry about the hassles" of hosting, upgrades etc - outsourcing! :)
I firmly believe in giving praise where praise is due, therefore I would like to publically thank Brena of typepad support for her excellent customer service / follow ups in resolving several of my recent support queries. Thank you again, Brena.
Watch this space as I have a lot to write about and a number of technical articles up my sleave.
I have received several emails from people recently concerning my X10 software which I wrote about earlier in the year on automatedhome. Firstly thank you for your interest and offers of support, if I get a chance I will reply privately. However to be perfectly honest my own X10 software hasn't progressed much since my last posting on automatedhome.
Now I could make the usual hobbiest "project delayed" type excuses about a busy professional work life, helping my girlfriend gain employment after finishing her university degree, helping to run hamfest 2004 on the day, picking my girlfriend up from the airport, changing car, holiday abroad, several big family occasions, starting preparations to move home etc - however I won't! :-)
I guess you could say my X10 work has now become one of those "when it's ready" type of projects - that is to say I am still working on it, have many new ideas in my mind but haven't yet put pen to paper. I would very much like to develop it beyond packet monitoring and using the X10 protocol to send text messages over the mains between different PC's within my home - something NOT to be encouraged without a carefully written protocol - I added this feature for a bit of fun to help me test my X10 software. Yes before anyone emails me to ask "Hello World!" was one of my first X10 "messages".
A few weeks ago, I gave a home automation talk at Flight Refueling Amateur Radio Society aka FRARS and attempted to demostrate my X10 software as part of my talk. Now I can and have written/supported reliable systems which deal with $$$$ of data but the first time I'm publically demostrating a piece of my own software under development and well.... to be perfectly honest it failed to work correctly on the PC I wanted to use to demostrate X10 packet analysis.
Quite simply due to time constraints it hadn't been developed enough, still this failure has annoyed me enough that I will probably get back to it soon to fix it.
To make matters worse - a few months ago I brought a VGA2TV box to make PC captures easier! So I duly took my VGA2TV box along with me for the talk only to discover just after we set it up on the FRARS TV that the clubs TV would only show my PC screen in black and white even after dip switch tweaking - GRRRR! So during our last FRARS committee meeting last weekend I proposed and won support from the rest of the committee for the purchase of a VGA2TV box to help resolve this issue for future FRARS presentations - yesterday I brought a VGA2TV box for the FRARS which should be fully installed for Paul's G7EYT wireless LAN talk in a few weeks time.
I was pleased however that despite the issues I have written about, my talk (which covered publically available information) was well received with some positive feedback and requests for more information.
I will therefore be shortly writing a "top level" article on home automation for FRARS and then hope to get back to developing my own X10 software in the not to distant future - home moving (no fixed date - yet!) and other things permitting.
My better half (or the ball and chain as several of my mates unkindly call her!) and myself have been discussing our next travels. We've recently got back from revisiting Hungary and Slovakia and plan to visit France again soon.
We both like exploring "new" places, particularly new countries. For various reasons we have now decided to plan a trip to Poland at some point in the not to distant future as well as a short break to France. Although a lady we were talking to yesterday in Bournemouth over a coffee has also now got us interested in taking a cheap Ryanair flight over to Dublin as well..... !
Currently we know very little about Poland, so I will start doing some research via the web and will blog about it here. However there is no better advice than from someone who has actually been to somewhere or better still is a local! So if anyone passing by this page just happens to directly know and can recommend places to stop over at in Poland then we would appreciate the details - thanks! Further offers/details of low cost accomodation with locals would also be appreciated as living like a local is the best way to get to really know a country :-) As far as UK tourists are concerned you won't find me wearing white socks with sandles and only talking in English looking for the nearest English pub serving English food and beer - far better to try to fit in with local clothes and local food and drinks !!
Although thinking about "local" drinks.... the only problem with local Central/Eastern European local drinks is that they are usually fairly strong and you end up being surrounded by people quite keen to top up your glass.... I still laugh everytime I remember watching Michael Palin in Russia on TV for one of his excellent travel programmes being filmed getting drunk with the locals, the film faded down with them still drinking after several hours and faded up again to text which simply said something like "3 days later..." !
Indeed I believe I spent 10 days in Romania during 1996 but for some reason due mainly to my ex-colleague Steve and myself being treated to untold kindness and being offered a drink and food almost every time we visited the many places we visited around Cluj Napoca most of that trip seems kinda hazy! Ok maybe it wasn't quite like that but felt like it at the time. Certaintly I was with my senses enough to recognise impressive technical skills at places such as the Technical University which visited several times. Still I digress... I would like to visit Transilvania and return to the beautiful mountains in the North on the border with Hungary. Someone I know has also given us some tips regarding visiting Ukraine.
Still first Poland!
The UK is at the cutting edge of the development of digital radio and television. So it is interesting to read that the UK's Digital Radio Development Bureau is predicting that by 2008, the sales of digital radios in the UK will increase from the current 1 million to 13 million according to this BBC article - Digital radio sales 13m 'by 2008'.
It is also interesting to learn that the UK government has apparently as of yet still not set a date for the switch-off of the UK's analogue radio signals although back in July 2004, the BBC also reported that the Analogue radio switch-off nears mentioning that UK Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell will decide that a analogue radio switch off date later this year (2004).
I wonder what this will mean for other analogue radio services in the UK, such as amateur radio?
"...Red regularly unbolted his cage door and released his favourite canine companions for midnight feasts..." reports the BBC in several interesting articles regarding Red, a highly intelligent lurcher who caused chaos at Battersea Dogs Home in London, UK by releasing as many as 9 friends from their Kennels and then leading them to the kitchen for midnight feasts.
These little doggy adventures puzzled Battersea staff to the point that they asked The Accidental Film Company to help by installing a temporary CCTV system which recorded footage of Red regularly releasing first himself from his own cage and then his pal Lucky, followed by a few more "selected" favourite mates (friends) for sneaky extra meals.
From Battersea's news page: "...Red's adventures have now been restricted to daylight hours as his kennel is locked during the night. If you are looking to give a dog a home and think you could give Red the mental stimulation he needs, please call Battersea Dogs Home on ++44 (0) 20 7627 7889 ..." (Remebering of course that if you are calling/donating to Battersea Dogs Home from outside the UK that you will need to check your time difference via the excellent timeanddate.com).
Now if only we were living somewhere at the moment with a large garden :-(
An amazing story which I found interesting - Deer's 25-mile bumper road trip.
The photo attached to the article is worth seeing.
Ross Mayfield CEO of Socialtext has written about an interesting article by the Globe and Mail titled "Wiki software provides free shortcut to cost savings" (Globe and Mail registration is required).
Ross's additional thoughts and perspective can be found in his post Wikis as a Shortcut to Cost Savings.
Good to see that the talented Mark Russinovich & Bryce Cogswell who run Sysinternals and Winternals have today (5/Oct/2004) announced that they have launched the Sysinternals RSS feed:
"...Sysinternals now has an RSS feed for the latest updates. Subscribe to it to get information on even minor tool updates that aren't announced in the What's New section..."
The Sysinternals RSS feed can be found here:
http://www.sysinternals.com/sysinternals.xml
Definately a feed well worth adding to your RSS news aggregator if like me you find Mark and Bryce's low level Windows utilites invaluable in resolving problems.
Wendy M. Grossman writing in her latest netwars column about Dilbert's ultimate house makes some interesting well thought out observations concerning smart homes. Wendy's article was also republished by The Inquirer in response to which Dounas Theodore, Architect Engineer AUTh, Greece writes to say that he feels that most of what Wendy writes about is "doable" however Dounas feels that IT companies should leave the "smart" part of "smart homes" entirely to the likes of MIT's Kinetic Design Group. I don't personally agree with Dounas, but appreciate his alternative perspective.
