Al's Blog-o-Sphere

No, no, not those Hams in Space!

I meant Amateur Radio Operators that are Astronauts. Ever since Owen Garriot, W5LFL, flew aboard STS-9 in 1983, there have been a series of Ham Operators aboard the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station. There were also Russian Hams aboard the MIR space station and Hams from a number of countries have been up in space on the various flights.

You may have been aware of this fact, or this might be the first time you have heard of it. It was a publicity coup for Ham Radio and NASA was fully in support of it. In fact, it couldn’t have happened without their support.

Having Ham Radio represented and operated from space is a great publicity tool for NASA. It also could be used as a backup communications system in the event of serious malfunction aboard the spacecraft. I’d hate to see things go that wrong – I’m sure they have other backup systems, so it would have to be the third or fourth or fifth resort – but it really could be used in that capacity.

So this is a good thing, right? A win-win for Hams and NASA alike, right? Well, maybe. Continue Reading…

I wrote a while ago about my experiences with cell phone accessories. The saga continues and after a long trip on the road using them, I have some more to say.

This week I took a trip to St. Louis and back for the FIRST Robotics World Championships. I went to support our team, The Warlocks Team 1507 and to volunteer my services as a robot inspector. Yes, I am a certified FIRST Robotics Robot Inspector, but that’s a story for another post.

I used my phone as my GPS navigation device on this trip as well. My Magellan would have done the job fine, but after a couple of years, the data could be out of date. Google Maps usually doesn’t have that problem.

So I stuck the arm and holder to the windshield with the suction cup and after a couple tries got it to stick. It stayed the entire trip once it stayed up. It’s still there… Continue Reading…

I’ve got a “new” laptop. It’s driving me crazy.

It’s a long story, so I’ll write it here. Too long for Facebook, which seems to get all my blogging attention these days. (Damn you FB!)

One the one hand it’s free. Free as in gonna cost you a lot of money, free. It’s an Acer Aspire 7736Z and it’s a beautiful laptop. Big screen in the desktop-replacement class. Too heavy to lug around, but nice to look at. It was given to me. It was also a basket case.

It was my wife’s laptop. She had it for about 2 years. Never took it anywhere, just used it on the kitchen table with the occasional trip to the living room. One day it started complaining about a low battery, but it was plugged in. Okay, bad charger, or cord. We’ve seen that before. Continue Reading…

…since I last posted here.

What have I done since then? Let’s see. The robotics team has built another robot. I got my Director’s number on the Geratol Net. I’ve gotten a month older…

That’s about it.

The robot for 2012 is done and looking good. We had relatively few problems programming it, though not totally problem-free, less than last year. The kids doing our programming are doing a great job and what we have is truly a joint project with us all putting our heads together to come up with working code. We looked good at the Penfield scrimmage a couple of days before the end of the build season. Two days of practice and fine-tuning at the Kenan center after that got things really humming. Continue Reading…