brad

@brad@posiwid.net

electrical engineer, synth designer, ham radio operator. alt of @kr4dio@mastodon.radio
website: ✔ https://posiwid.net
pronouns: he/him

Ed W8EMV :radio_tower: »
@w8emv@mastodon.radio

Ordered a radio from Rokland, the "WisMesh Pocket v2", after the ARROW @W8RP presentation by Blake the other night.

When it arrives my plan is to work this into my Ann Arbor "Bike Every Park" parks challenge - throw the node in a backpack, stop at a city park, see if there's coverage there, make a suitable note, move on.

First to try is Burns Park which I know is near @W9TNC which should be easy. From there start mapping out radio terrain.

longer -> vielmetti.typepad.com/w8emv/20

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    Ed W8EMV :radio_tower: boosted

    brad »
    @brad@posiwid.net

    @w8emv@mastodon.radio Depending on terrain, a handful of fixed infrastructure nodes can be really helpful in making the mesh usable until it can reach critical mass. It's been cool watching our Austin mesh develop from a dozen people messaging "ack?" to fairly robust coverage through most of the city over the past year.

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      Ed W8EMV :radio_tower: »
      @w8emv@mastodon.radio

      @brad The ARROW ham radio club is talking about putting a Meshtastic node up on one of its repeater sites, which would give us coverage to the south side of Ann Arbor. We do have a few trees here to get in the way.

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        brad »
        @brad@posiwid.net

        One of the first signs of spring: my Texas Redbuds are budding

        small pink-red flower buds on thin branches

        Alt...small pink-red flower buds on thin branches

        closeup photo of red-pink flower buds

        Alt...closeup photo of red-pink flower buds

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        brad »
        @brad@posiwid.net

        A dust storm from West Texas blew through this afternoon, turning everything sepia

        Landscape photo with rolling hills and hazy dirt colored sky

        Alt...Landscape photo with rolling hills and hazy dirt colored sky

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        brad »
        @brad@posiwid.net

        I spent all day re-arranging stuff in my office to make space for my new plotter -- this thing is a beast!

        Photo of a big red IBM power toggle switch

        Alt...Photo of a big red IBM power toggle switch

        Photo of the IBM badge on a 7375 pen plotter

        Alt...Photo of the IBM badge on a 7375 pen plotter

        Photo of the control panel of a 7375 pen plotter with several numbered buttons and a joystick

        Alt...Photo of the control panel of a 7375 pen plotter with several numbered buttons and a joystick

          Michael Downey 🧢 »
          @downey@floss.social

          🗞️ OK folks, time for a refreshed round of reader recommendations. What do you use to consume etc.?

          (Only interested in solutions, and preferably ones that are web-based or otherwise able to be synchronized across devices.)

          :boost_love:

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            brad »
            @brad@posiwid.net

            I use miniflux (self-hosted): https://miniflux.app/

              J.C. KC8JC 📻 »
              @KC8JC@mastodon.radio

              What's the Python IDE of choice?

              Don't say VS. I only ever used that when I got paid to. vim is fine, but I'm wondering what others use.

              Mac/Linux.

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              Matt W1CDN »
              @W1CDN@mastodon.radio

              @KC8JC sadly I use VS sometimes, but a lot of times I just use Notepad++ or BBedit (RIP TaxtWrangler).

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                brad »
                @brad@posiwid.net

                @KC8JC@mastodon.radio I recently switched from nvim to helix, and I'm enjoying it.

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                  J.C. KC8JC 📻 »
                  @KC8JC@mastodon.radio

                  @brad I love vim, so I'll take a look at helix for sure! Thanks!

                    Jeff »
                    @unicycle@mastodon.online

                    @brad @KC8JC ooo, I’ve using neovim, hadn’t heard of helix, I’m installing now!

                      Erik 📻🪐🚲 »
                      @SM0RVV@mastodon.radio

                      @KC8JC Emacs, always emacs. Steep learning curve, but it's the last editor you ever have to learn.
                      Tounge in cheek, but with a grain of truth

                        brad boosted

                        Scott VE3QBZ »
                        @ve3qbz@mastodon.radio

                        Seize the means of activation. POTA not accepting your favourite local city park or suburban nature spot into their database because it doesn't meet "their" criteria?

                        That local hill or non-distinguished promontory that you enjoy the view from atop doesn't qualify as a "summit"?

                        Assign it your own entity number, and activate it.

                        Communicate. Activate. Send QSL cards. Make up your own weird awards. Log it. Blog it.

                        Manifest it.

                        We don't need guardrails where we are going.

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                        Joe KC1SRI »
                        @Geojoek@mastodon.hams.social

                        @ve3qbz

                        "This is special event station KC1SRI calling CQ in celebration of my favorite taco truck."

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                          Athena »
                          @Athena@chaosfem.tw

                          @Geojoek
                          Honestly I’d participate in Taco Trucks On The Air (TTOTA)

                          Might be hard to find a place for the antenna tho
                          @ve3qbz

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                            Joe KC1SRI »
                            @Geojoek@mastodon.hams.social

                            @Athena @ve3qbz

                            This could revive VHF/UHF mobile.

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                              Scott VE3QBZ »
                              @ve3qbz@mastodon.radio

                              @Geojoek @Athena ya, but it will take a while before we all have taco trucks. Still, it's a good plan to have. Taco con qso

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                                Athena »
                                @Athena@chaosfem.tw

                                @ve3qbz
                                No no, you don’t need to have your own taco truck. You get lunch at a local taco truck and activate it while you eat

                                Tacos con QSO is an excellent pun
                                @Geojoek

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                                  Scott VE3QBZ »
                                  @ve3qbz@mastodon.radio

                                  @Athena @Geojoek so no taco truck? Not even a small one?

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                                    Joe KC1SRI »
                                    @Geojoek@mastodon.hams.social

                                    @ve3qbz @Athena

                                    If you drive a Kei truck and get tacos from a local taco truck, your Kei truck instantly becomes a taco truck. One can mount a mast on the back. It will be awesome.

                                    Gyeesh I wish I had $8K to blow on something like that.

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                                      brad »
                                      @brad@posiwid.net

                                      In that case, I hope you get a chance to see them. Vai and Danny Carey are great "young" additions, and Adrian is still a rock star :)

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                                        brad »
                                        @brad@posiwid.net

                                        @Ricardus@mastodon.sdf.org I saw BEAT in Austin a couple of months ago and thought it was great at the time. But after more reflection, I felt like it wasn't much more than a nostalgia experience. I really preferred the 2017 tour incarnation of KC with Fripp and the three drummers across the front of the stage.

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                                          brad »
                                          @brad@posiwid.net

                                          @molly0xfff@hachyderm.io This may just be my own personal journey, but I feel like the early-mid aughts were a special time with blogs, blog-rings, RSS, and aggregators. I remember building a proto-social-media site where local blogs were aggregated into a forum for discussion. A friend and I did a weekly podcast about underground rock bands in Shanghai. Pre smartphone photo blogs were amazing. Non-commercial sites like shanghaiist (gothamist franchise) and metafilter could survive on adword revenue. Google search still worked.

                                          My memory of the "personal web" at that time is that it felt like it was a linear progression from BBSes, gopher, Usenet, and IRC. More graphical and more widely accessible, but with a lot of the same community spirit.

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                                            brad »
                                            @brad@posiwid.net

                                            I just realized my good ol' days ended about the time smartphones became ubiquitous. I wonder if that has anything to do with it. How much of that old feeling could be recaptured just by using a desktop computer to "go online?"

                                            CC: @molly0xfff@hachyderm.io

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                                              brad »
                                              @brad@posiwid.net

                                              Travis County decided my house is worth about 4x market value, so I get to spend several hours this morning waiting for them to show up for my "scheduled" protest hearing.

                                              Photo of the Travis County Central Appraisal District building with blue sky in the background

                                              Alt...Photo of the Travis County Central Appraisal District building with blue sky in the background

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                                              brad »
                                              @brad@posiwid.net

                                              The neighbors' falling-down shack finally fell all the way down. The kids and I were doing crafts when we heard a loud crash outside. The building was about 10ft from our property line. Before pic is from last summer.

                                              Small house missing a couple of walls, leaning precariously

                                              Alt...Small house missing a couple of walls, leaning precariously

                                              Pile of construction debris

                                              Alt...Pile of construction debris

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                                              brad »
                                              @brad@posiwid.net

                                              Back home in Austin, and our sage bush correctly predicted this morning's rain

                                              Texas sage bush with pink-purple flowers in front of a blue sky with wispy white clouds

                                              Alt...Texas sage bush with pink-purple flowers in front of a blue sky with wispy white clouds

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                                              brad »
                                              @brad@posiwid.net

                                              yt-dlp can also download subtitles, including automatically generated closed-captioning.
                                              Formatting and screen captures would take some manual work, though.

                                              CC: @Mnemonic@hackers.town

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                                                brad »
                                                @brad@posiwid.net

                                                Weekend project! Arduino based eprom programmer: https://github.com/walhi/arduino_eprom27_programmer

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                                                  brad »
                                                  @brad@posiwid.net

                                                  While playing with my kids at Jinjiang Action Park (锦江乐园) earlier this week, I had a sudden rush of memories from my first time there in 2002-03. At the time, I still carried a paper pocket dictionary everywhere, but my Chinese had gotten good enough that I was able to make friends with people who didn't speak English. A couple of my "local" friends, S and X, wanted to check out this huge new ferris wheel that had just opened up. We walked around the outer wall of the park until we found a some construction debris we could use to climb over, then just hopped the wall. I don't remember what the ferris wheel cost, but it seemed expensive at the time, so S talked an attendant into letting us ride for free. They say the wheel is going to be torn down later this year.

                                                  photo of an amusement park with merry go round and ferris wheel

                                                  Alt...photo of an amusement park with merry go round and ferris wheel

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                                                  brad »
                                                  @brad@posiwid.net

                                                  Bluetooth audio has been broken on my Ubuntu Macbook since the upgrade to 24.04, but I finally got around to seriously looking for a solution today. After quite a few useless stackoverflow comments, I found the answer. Turns out it was as simple as blacklisting the snd_soc_avs module: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/pipewire/+bug/2063150

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                                                  brad »
                                                  @brad@posiwid.net

                                                  @w8emv@mastodon.radio Sounds interesting. Do you happen to have a link to the PDF?

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                                                    brad »
                                                    @brad@posiwid.net

                                                    If you've had ducks before you likely know better than I do, but I had better flow and fewer clogging issues with my garden fish pond drain when I switched to a dome-shaped bottom drain (think inverted salad bowl 1/2-inch above floor)

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                                                      brad »
                                                      @brad@posiwid.net

                                                      It's apparently a real word, but my brain independently invented the term eco-brutalist when I saw the 1000 Trees building looming over Suzhou Creek this afternoon

                                                      Photo of a large building with towering concrete planters beside a river

                                                      Alt...Photo of a large building with towering concrete planters beside a river

                                                      Photo of a large building with towering concrete planters

                                                      Alt...Photo of a large building with towering concrete planters

                                                      Photo of a large building with towering concrete planters

                                                      Alt...Photo of a large building with towering concrete planters

                                                      Photo of a large building with towering concrete planters covered in scaffolding beside another highrise

                                                      Alt...Photo of a large building with towering concrete planters covered in scaffolding beside another highrise

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                                                      brad »
                                                      @brad@posiwid.net

                                                      I feel fortunate to have had the chance to see a collection of Roman Verostko works in person at MUD Gallery in Shanghai. He was a great pioneer of generative and plotter art.

                                                      Artwork by Roman Verostko, colorful lines, thick black line

                                                      Alt...Artwork by Roman Verostko, colorful lines, thick black line

                                                      Artwork by Roman Verostko, colorful lines, thick black line

                                                      Alt...Artwork by Roman Verostko, colorful lines, thick black line

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                                                      brad »
                                                      @brad@posiwid.net

                                                      Uspol [SENSITIVE CONTENT]@requiem@hackers.town I'm not an infosec expert, but I don't see how the US government can monitor or limit what software people run on their own computers, as the first paragraph of the article implies.

                                                      The article goes on to say that Kaspersky is banned from providing software to US users, which I guess is possible to enforce to a certain extent.

                                                      I'm in Shanghai right now, seamlessly using a VPN to access blocked content (including the linked article), so I'm a little skeptical.

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                                                        brad »
                                                        @brad@posiwid.net

                                                        @ripper@chaos.social If you have a lot of PCBs to change, it's possible to use a regex in your language of choice to modify the file directly

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                                                          brad »
                                                          @brad@posiwid.net

                                                          @ripper@chaos.social select all, edit menu, edit text and graphics properties

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                                                            brad »
                                                            @brad@posiwid.net

                                                            I took a little walk around Fengjing Ancient Town (枫泾古镇) on the outskirts of Shanghai this morning

                                                            old Chinese buildings along a canal

                                                            Alt...old Chinese buildings along a canal

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                                                            brad »
                                                            @brad@posiwid.net

                                                            @tony@mastodon.radio @W1CDN@mastodon.radio Seconding this. I spent a lot of time tweaking controller settings in RetroArch to make my 8bitdo Pro controller usable for N64 games, and I'm still not really happy with it.

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                                                              brad »
                                                              @brad@posiwid.net

                                                              The park by the National Palace Museum is pretty nice

                                                              zig-zag bridge over a pond with koi

                                                              Alt...zig-zag bridge over a pond with koi

                                                              zig-zag bridge over a pond with koi

                                                              Alt...zig-zag bridge over a pond with koi

                                                              view of park with pond and pavilion

                                                              Alt...view of park with pond and pavilion

                                                              tropical trees with lots of air roots

                                                              Alt...tropical trees with lots of air roots

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                                                              brad »
                                                              @brad@posiwid.net

                                                              Sunny morning in Taipei

                                                              View over the rooftops of Taipei with Taipei 101 skyscraper and mountains in the background

                                                              Alt...View over the rooftops of Taipei with Taipei 101 skyscraper and mountains in the background

                                                              View over the rooftops of Taipei

                                                              Alt...View over the rooftops of Taipei

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                                                              brad »
                                                              @brad@posiwid.net

                                                              We're on our way to Shanghai (via Seattle and Taipei)

                                                              Airplane at gate with jetway attached and Delta baggage trolley

                                                              Alt...Airplane at gate with jetway attached and Delta baggage trolley

                                                              brad boosted

                                                              Paris Marx »
                                                              @parismarx@mastodon.online

                                                              Farmers in Bastrop, TX were hopeful when Elon Musk bought land nearby, but now he’s turning the area into “an environmentally hazardous industrial park.” Authorities won’t do anything because they’re understaffed and “intimidated by their powerful new neighbor.”

                                                              texasmonthly.com/news-politics

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                                                                brad »
                                                                @brad@posiwid.net

                                                                @paulrickards@mastodon.social I didn't have a modem for my VIC20 or C64 when I was a kid, but I happen to have one of those VICmodem cartridge near the top of my retro computing project pile. I was thinking about sticking an esp32 serial-wifi thing in the case.

                                                                VICModem cartridge, Hamtext VIC-20 cartridge, and serial port cartridge for HP85 on top of a TRS-80 pen plotter

                                                                Alt...VICModem cartridge, Hamtext VIC-20 cartridge, and serial port cartridge for HP85 on top of a TRS-80 pen plotter

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                                                                  brad »
                                                                  @brad@posiwid.net

                                                                  @dylanbeaudette@mastodon.radio I use RG400 for no particular reason other than (I think) it looks fancy

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                                                                    brad »
                                                                    @brad@posiwid.net

                                                                    @brad@posiwid.net @dylanbeaudette@mastodon.radio I try to always have a BNC adapter or jumper handy

                                                                    RG400 coax jumper cable coiled with male RF connector and female BNC

                                                                    Alt...RG400 coax jumper cable coiled with male RF connector and female BNC

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                                                                      brad »
                                                                      @brad@posiwid.net

                                                                      There's been a lot of talk about enshittification lately, and this Baffler article is a really good look at the history of SaaS: https://thebaffler.com/latest/spreadsheet-assassins-king

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                                                                      brad »
                                                                      @brad@posiwid.net

                                                                      The boys and I hiked down to the bottom of our hill this afternoon

                                                                      Two boys facing away from the camera, climbing up a rocky hill with sparse vegetation under a blue sky

                                                                      Alt...Two boys facing away from the camera, climbing up a rocky hill with sparse vegetation under a blue sky

                                                                      Two boys facing away from the camera, walking down a rocky hill with sparse vegetation under a blue sky

                                                                      Alt...Two boys facing away from the camera, walking down a rocky hill with sparse vegetation under a blue sky

                                                                      History

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