I mentioned projects I wanted to build in my last post. I thought I would make a list of the projects I have been planning so I can start to prioritize them and gather all my notes in one place. In no particular order they are:

• ARES Boom Box
• Battery Box
• FlashTracker
• Lancer8800 - Install Yaesu FT-8800R in the Mitsubishi Lancer
• QRSS Beacon
• Laser Harp
• Near Space Exploration
• Portable CW QRP Station
• ARES Go Kit
• Ignition Switch Power Controller

I don't know what this page says but it looks like they're selling an orrey kit! I want it!

Our first Arts & Crafts Night was a success. hollyqueen make Chicken Soup. cheesentoast finished a necklace. omg_teh_funnay sat around being a smart ass. I baked biscuits and read some supporting material for some projects I want to work on in the coming months. A low-key night but as the first one I am going to call it a success.

Preparing for posting for National Preparedness Month has reignited my interest in amateur radio. The thing that keeps knocking me off track is that I get wound up with living in an apartment so I don't have a place to install antennas or put together a large amateur radio station. So I keep reminding myself of how much fun I do have when I play and that any activity is better than no activity. There are lots of things I can do with the radio equipment I do have. So I have a list of projects that I can do now and another list of projects that I will do in the future.

The future list is waiting on saving up a bit of money to buy new gear with HF capabilities. Because there isn't much room in the apartment for radios my plan is to put together a rig that could be used while backpacking. Then I'll take that to different areas in the area and operate from islands, mountain tops, parks and whatever. I also need to learn Morse Code so that I can use some real small portable units.

Another thing I need to keep reminding myself is that "mike fright" is a common affliction of radio operators. That is a fear of pushing the button and actually talking to people over the radio. Tonight I overcame that fear and pushed the button to join some folks on the Nine O'Clock Net. I was given a nice welcome and no one pointed out the few mistakes I made. I'll have to keep chatting with these folks and get over that fear.

So the first big project on my list is getting one of the radios installed in Zero. I sit in traffic often enough, why not use some of that gear to talk to people while driving around? I have the radio, I just need an antenna, some coax and the kit to mount the radio in a different location from the control head. Oh, and finding someone with some tools and a bit of skill with installing radios in cars. ;)

I’ve created a Google Code project to host my projects and code so that those who are interested can play with them. Enjoy!

I found a nice writeup of some amateur radio operators down in Oregon helping out during the flooding. Having participated in simulated emergency reponses I know that the article doesn't give us the full sense of how much work was required to keep communications going. I was exhausted at the end of the SET which was scheduled for an afternoon and didn't have to deal with the stress and chaos of a real emergency. So I say thanks to those who helped out!

Jeff Davis, KE9V, also blogged about this story. I wanted to mention his post because he brought up the point that the public service agencies have spent millions in upgrading their communications systems. Yet we still read about "amateur" operators who can deploy and communicate during an emergency when the "professionals" have lost their ability to communicate.

As you might know I've struggled a bit with how to be an active amateur radio operator while living in an apartment. I think I might have found a project that will make it easier. I want to build an ARES Boom Box. One box with radio, batteries, power supplies and charger. Plug it into the wall and you can operate while it charges the batteries. Pull the plug and carry it to an operation location and you're back on the air after a quick antenna setup. I have the radio which is the most expensive single part. Once I put together the final list of components I'll know how big of a box I need to put it all together.

I have had a general feeling of… I’m not sure what word to use. I’m not unhappy and in some areas of my life things are outstanding. There’s just this feeling of “more” that I could accomplish. Having spent the last few nights without sleep I’ve had a bit of time to think about goals and how I spend my time.

I spend too much time playing games like WoW and EVE. The problem isn’t playing games, but that MMORPGs like that don’t end so they keep stealing time I could use for more productive things. I can play console games and give up a week or two as a break between projects. And the DS is always good for those times when I’m waiting around and don’t have enough time to unpack the laptop.

Television doesn’t take too much time because I split the time with other tasks. I catch up on some reading or work on the laptop while watching. With the Tivo I can push off watching if I have more important tasks. The number of shows I watch will probably drop as they are not keeping my interest.

With the time I’ve regained my plan is to:

1. Complete my first Perl module, Math::Interval, and upload it to CPAN. The API is set and the tests pass. I just need to write more documentation.
2. Learn about writing XS modules for Perl to expose the floating-point functions in <fenv.h>. In particular Math::Interval could benefit from fesetround() and fegetround(). I’m sure some other modules could use it too.
3. Update Math::Interval to use the floating-point module. The tricky part of this will be creating tests that correctly deal with the inexact nature of IEEE 784 floating-point math.
4. Write up a talk, article or paper on what I learned about writing Perl modules and dealing with that inexact nature of IEEE 784 floating-point math.

After that my longer range plans include getting some quality time with Parrot and Perl 6.

In my spare time I’ve been working on a mash-up between LiveJournal interests and Flickr tags. Given a username my program pulls their list of interests from LJ and then asks Flickr for 5 images that use that interest as a tag.

The last piece fell into place this morning and I’ve been able create a few test pages on my local machine. It is very slow when I run it against a new user, which pulls the interest data from LJ. There’s obviously some bottleneck in how I add/update interests in the database.

I also need to create a scalable limit for the number of images returned. With the current default of 5 I get 715 images but someone like qt3_14159 only gets 5 images back. I’m thinking of something like 300 divided by the number of interests. Maybe less if Flickr starts complaining.

Anyway, here’s a sample pass on my interests. Should I keep going?

I had an idea for a project today but I'm having trouble coming up with a name. So I thought I would open it up to all you wonderful, intelligent, creative people out there. In short the site is a place where you can create a list of books that you would like to read. See I have a huge list of books I want to read that's written down in many different locations. My idea was to make one place I could use to track my list.

I don't want to limit the name by involving books in the title because my plan is to extend the site to include movies and music. So, what would you want to call such a beast?

Thanks!