Tuesday, March 04, 2025

We must fight

Imagine that you are okay in any particular skill. You can see people who are better than you at that skill, and you can see worse.


Okay.


Now imagine the skill of being vicious. The skill that you can be pointed at something and act absolutely vicious at it. The aim is important too. That you can act absoltely as vicisiously as possible in any particular direction.


Now collect and harvest that skill.


Refine that skill in such a way that you can be paid to do that.


Now, sell that skill.


And now we are the victims of a small and insidious group of people who have been paid by the rich to incite the many.


That skill to manipulate and divide is intense, harnessed, and ready for absolute Capitalism.


Go buy that skill. Harvest decades of planning to undermine the United States of America.


You will not prevail. You will be defeated by the willingness of the people to do what is better for humanity. Because we care about each other. Because we are equal.



Sunday, February 23, 2025

The most obstiant are the most important to educate

 The hardest people to convince that you still care about are the most important to make change

Tuesday, December 24, 2024

Thumbs and Opposing Views

 The opposable thumb is an emblamatic feature of the primates. Evolution took a while to figure out that having an extra finger in the wrong direction is super helpful. Powers of 2 are generally super helpful computationally. Why then do we have "10" fingers? We probably had a power of 2 (we had 4 fingers on each hand with no thumb), and then one popped out accidentally and it was super cool.


Now you could hook onto things from both sides. Grabbing some objects is so much easier with a friggin thumb. You get pushback. You get strength in multiple directions. I can grab things one way with only fingers and could also grab something with just my thumb but in the opposite direction.


Wow, having a oddly not-power-of-two finger number that actually ends up being the opposing minority is super helpful. 


Kind of like having divergent poltical beliefs is very healthy. It let's society grab onto some things in a way that many others could not. It is the same thing, with strength and use, but in an opposite direction.


Wow, so being divergent is actually pretty awesome. You started with something good, fingers, and you ended up with a thumb, and now you can grasp so much more from the world.


If politics were framed in this mindset, maybe people would calm down for a damn second.


At any level of our society we should recognize our differences amongst our neighbors and appreciate them because help us grasp what we might miss.

Thursday, March 21, 2024

Interfaces and Implementations

 Sometimes you want the implementation, sometimes you want the interface.

If you think about people and software, knowing how someone or something works is important. It can help you interact with this thing. If I know my significant other snores at night when they sleep on their back, then maybe I can give them an extra pillow or more room so they roll over on their side and snore less so I can sleep more. I potentially know more about the the thing under inspection than it does, so I can help interact with it better to make my and hopefully their world better.


Sometimes interfaces are useful too. I don’t know how everything in a bank works, I just know that if I deposit money, I should be able to get it back later (maybe with some interest). I don’t have to know how loans work, or interest rates, or how they interact with the Fed to get their own money to help pay me my interest.


There is also a aspect about ourselves where this is important. From the objects’ perspective, if you will. If I am grumpy and don’t want to talk to anyone while walking through the subway back from work, perhaps I put on a meanish demeanor, and people understand that I don’t want any social interaction. Or perhaps I really have no idea what I’m doing at work on a particular task, and I would really benefit me if my boss knew I was working on something I wasn’t very skilled at yet, so they figure out how to give me extra help. Or I’m a baby and my mom knows that I will need a new diaper a few hours after I eat even if I have no clue.


What is an interface exactly? It’s the surface that we present to the outside world. It’s how we want to be interacted with. What is the nitty-gritty details of how something works? That’s the implementation. Sometimes you care, sometimes you don’t.


In software, an interface is a really powerful thing. It lets people who are trying to use me know how I should be interacted with to do so. I have these things you can do to me. I may not exactly do those things, but I should. It’s the expected behavior, a contract. If you do one of these fixed things to me, I will respond in a reasonable fashion.


Knowing how people want to be interacted with can be extremely useful. Seeing a pretty girl at a bar, who's all dressed up and smiling, probably wants to be approached. A programming language class representing a bank account with a "deposit" function that takes an numerical amount probably wants to accept dollars to be added to that account.


Knowing the implementation can also be extremely useful. If I have something in a Java class that implements the List interface will allow appending items and iterating through them, but if I want the 4000th element, then I might definitely want to know I'm using an ArrayList which has O(1) direct memory access so that if I'm walking each element of it, I don't end up accidentally traversing a LinkedList instead which will be extremely inefficient because it has to traverse and re-count each element every time to get to the next item.


Maybe you have a friend who always cares about appearances. So they are always looking like they have everything together on the outside. But they are your good friend, and you know something really bad just happened to them. You know their implementation, that they are potentially hiding that they are very down, so it's really useful to look beyond that interface and offer support.


These are powerful distinctions. How does something want to be interacted with, and how does it actually work. Knowing the distinction with people and software is important.

Sunday, August 20, 2023

Techno Gecko WTF project radio setup

Overview

I thought my learnings/notes from this project to setup a few ham radios to do APRS broadcasting for my Burning Man project were pretty useful. There are lots of Youtube videos of doing basic setup, but here is a list of my basic settings. We used multiple Kenwood TH-D72a radios with GPS and APRS enabled to beacon each other so we could locate our art car out in the playa from our camp.

Questions

  • What is North America APRS frequency?
    • 144.390
    • Europe uses 144.380
  • Which APRS waypoint format does tgwtf expect?
    • NMEA? (Tgecko had this set)
    • Kenwood?
    • Magellan?
  • Do we want PC output for all radios? Just tcamp?
    • 350
  • What is “PACKET 12” versus “APRS 12” ?
    • Looks like BCON “beacon” button only works when APRS 12 is selected
      • Also looks like setting power output to EL “extra low” with [F][MENU] makes the radios not power cycle

  • Why does the TNC make the guppy radio power cycle?
    • Can I disable it without interfering with WTF use?
      • Also looks like setting power output to EL “extra low” with [F][MENU] makes the radios not power cycle
    • Does it actually save battery?
    • Should we disable the second band to save power?

      • Click [DUAL] to toggle disabling

  • Figure out how to set GPS location to a fixed position for TCAMP so we can save power
  • What is QSY?
    • Q codes are various 3 letter codes with specific radio meanings 
    • QSY in particular means “change frequency”

Radios

    • Configure

      • Instructions below for full reset for sending/receiving just from radio

      • serial port connection

        • From Mac

        • `screen tty.usbmodem14101 1200` with the TH-D74a connected


        • From RPi

    • Which was the better channel for APRS? A or B? Find comment from Youtuber

RPi’s

    • Check that camp RPi boots

    • Recompile binary

      • Install Docker

      • Try to actually recompile from Linux

      • Install to RPi

      • Go through Pivotal Tracker with details about Linux setup

    • Get new coordinates from Dmitry

    • Setup Camp RPi as best as possible

    • Setup Guppy


Basic Setup

For TH-D74a (for Glenn’s newer radio)

  • Make sure it’s not in KISS12 mode (you should see APRS12 and not missing icon altogether)

    • To switch, use F shortcut button and switch to option 5 to toggle to APRS mode

For TH-D72a (older TG radios)

  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4IuACLGTqs

  • In General

    • Hitting Menu button will help you escape to main screen

    • GPS MUST be flashing to beacon APRS signals!

    • guy had non 144.390 (other channel) set to "144.530" for his friend or something?

  • To RESET Completely

    • Reset radio

      • turn off radio

      • hold down power + function button (blue circle with F inside)

      • select FULL reset

      • hit right button on round button (DPAD)

  • Enable GPS

    • hit Function

    • select Function-1 using up/down

    • hit right on GPS

    • select "on"

    • hit right to select

    • Main screen should show "iGPS" in top right corner now

  • Disable Battery Saver

    • Hit Menu

    • select "110"

    • select "Off" to disable battery saver

  • Turn off "APO"

    • Hit Menu

    • select "111"

    • select "Off"

  • Set date

    • hit menu

    • select "194"

    • enter date

  • Set time

    • select "195"

    • enter time

  • Set UTC Offset

    • select "196"

    • enter UTC -7 for California/Nevada

  • Disable Battery Saver in GPS

    • select "201"

    • select "off"

  • Set Callsign

    • select "301"

    • enter "TGUPPY" or "TGCAMP" or "TGLENN" or “...”

  • Setup frequency for 144.000 (A Channel)

    • hit "ENT" key to directly enter number

    • using numeric buttons

    • enter "144.390" - for United States! "144.380" is Europe

  • Turn on APRS lock

    • Select 302

    • Select “On + PTT + TNC”

    • This disables trying to use voice over data signal as well as change the aprs frequency as well as disabling the TNC

  • iGPS should hopefully be flashing now indicating that it has a GPS lock!

  • Enable TNC

    • should see "APRS12" to right of the "H"

    • should see "D" in white on black right of "144.390"

  • Verify GPS Coordinates

    • Select POS button to see your current location

    • hit right to see speed and angle

    • shows "TP" which is trust point which is a pre-entered location to go to

  • To used "fixed location" if GPS isn't working

    • you can hit "F" function key and go to "2" to disable track log

    • track log is breadcrumbs of your locations

  • Turn on Voice Alert

    • F "7"

Enabling Computer Output

  • Set computer output on / set baud rate / set waypoint……

Screen icon meanings

  • Settings

    • "H" in far top left

    • "iGPS" in top right corner

  • Far Top Left

    • shows "H" "L" "El" for High Low Extra low

    • Toggle by hitting Function + MENU

    • should be "H"


Acronyms

  • APO - Automatic Power Off