Archive: Hobbies

I've spent a bit of time over the last week putting some scripting together to build a new website. The site is morseringtones.com and as you might imagine there are morse code mp3 ringtones availabl…

I don't know where to file this, but it was interesting to me.... this how-to walks you through a cheap way to make good closeup photos... Basically they have you construct a light tent from a card b…

If you're interested I've got a "first impressions" look at the Zoom H4 over on the ashevillemusiclessons.com site. I couldn't decide where it would be more appropriate to post.....

I've got to say, I've almost wondered if the Zoom H4 was true vaporware the last few days. it's supposed to be received by various vendors (around October 1st-3rd) and I still haven't seen ONE first …

So, I mentioned a few weeks back that I was really starting to look again at audio equipment. I have a planned project that I would really like to capture high quality direct to digital audio for and…

Wow, this is nice - and frankly, something I could probably spend hours with. Search Engine Watch tells us that Google will debut a searchable news archive that takes us back through around 200 years…

For most people here in the US, this last weekend was known as Labor Day weekend, for me though... it was more like Audio on Linux weekend. I've mentioned before that I use my computer for most EVERY…

I'm such a sucker for technology sometimes.... I'm into too many things it seems. I do computer repair which can keep things fairly busy, I keep up with this and a slew of other websites which is ano…

I don't know if I've mentioned it before here, but languages are one of the things that fascinate me. I've studied Spanish, German and French. Although right now I would barely be able to recognize a…

I've posted several things over at the onlineradiotv.com site. For starters I've got links to a few international (shortwave) broadcasters live audio streams and where available their "latest" englis…

I'll be adding the links shortly, but I've got a new site roughed out... it's along the lines of the previous post. I thought it may not have enough frequent posting to really be an eventful site, bu…

I've got a lot of posts related to shortwave radio and radio broadcasts online (and tv broadcasts online.) Which got me to thinking how I wanted to organize the information. There's a part of me that…

Ok - I was thinking I might have been a bit too dismissive of flightgear. So, I took a second look (and a third and fourth.) In fact, I found a source rpm of the 0.99 version and rebuilt it for Mandr…

I remember back when I was running Windows as my primary OS, one of my favorite diversions was Microsoft Flight Simulator (2000?) In fact, I clearly remember circumnavigating the globe in a Cessna in…

We don't live in a quiet world, cars, equipment, alarms, fans, tv's radios, etc. etc. etc. We have a very noisy Radio Frequency world as well. All sorts of electronic devices can add to the cacophony…

Ok - Now I've mentioned the Sony shortwave radio a couple times. It comes with a little (maybe 23 foot?) random wire antenna that really boosts reception over the internal "whip" antenna. In fact, I …

It's not often that I get to talk about some of my hobbies on this site. The Genealogy sites are reserved for one of those hobbies, but time certainly takes it's toll and frankly it's hard to have mu…

For many years I'd been curious about shortwave radio. Finally maybe five years ago, I broke down and bought a cheap ($30) shortwave radio to see what I could hear. It was ok. Probably among the best…

For some time I've meant to do a post on some of my favorite places to find odd electronics components (and surplus stuff...) Something about electronics components is that there's so much potential.…

I'm afraid it was something I expected would happen, *(although you always hope a company will look on such imitation as a form of flattery and be cooperative/excited about the new application of an …

Off topic - Space pictures have always held a special fascination for me and today when I ran across this one I couldn't resist mentioning it. Maybe it's all the space-related movies growing up, or j…

The last post was disabling unwanted sounds on a laptop running Mandriva 2006.... this is about an archive of Creative Commons licensed audio free for the downloading. The Freesound project boasts a …

Ok - not work related, but... I was remembering with one of my brother's a computer game we played maybe 10 years ago that was a strategy game and had a neat play by email feature. The game was turn …

I've played around with Kstars off and on for a good while. It reminds me vaguely of a program I used to have under windows. It's essentially a planetarium on your desktop. It is GPL licensed and par…

This may not directly relate to computers, but one of my interests has been solar electric. I have a solar and battery system setup for powering small things when we have black outs and I also have a…

Ok, so with the post on the shortwave schedule viewer software, I got the idea to mention a site I've played with and think is a pretty neat idea. Of course, part of the concept of shortwave is, with…

I don't know how many know, but one of my sidelines (hobbies) over the years has been Genealogy. Sometimes I've had more time for it than others. The last couple of years it hasn't been something I'v…