If you plan to transmit on your radio, you need a way to test your transmitter without radiating a signal. You do that by transmitting into a “dummy load”. I had a 20 Watt dummy load, but I needed one to handle 100 Watts, so I built a $40 kit in June. This was the first serious soldering I had done in years, maybe decades.
I built the Oak Hills Research RFL-100 kit. A pre-built 100 W dummy load is usually $150-200. This kit is $40.
Radio Scouting is an international activity, and the World Organization of the Scout Movement (WOSM) has patches and pins for it. I love the classic design, and I also love the price, with the current exchange rate.
The WOSM Radio Scouting emblem looks a lot like the World Scout Crest, but with a radio twist. It has the same purple background, but instead of the circling rope, it has dots, like Morse Code. The fleur-de-lis is at the bottom, and the center is a globe with headphones, a neckerchief, and some lightning bolt lines. It sounds complicated, but it says “Scouts on the radio around the world” without using words.
Right now (late 2016), the cloth badge (patch) is $1.29 (£1.04) and the metal badge (pin) is $1.81 (£1.46). You can work out the shipping cost yourself, but I think it is worth it to wear the world-wide symbol of Radio Scouting.
There are many outdoor cookbooks, but The Magic of Fire by William Rubel is the one that makes you want to build a fire in the back yard right now and roast onions.
Let’s hear what he has to say about those roasted onions, the first recipe in the book.
At Chegg, we test the relevance of our search engine using customer data. We extract anonymous information about queries and clicks, then use that to automatically test improvements to search. When our search engine provides results that better match what our customers are choosing, we call that an improvement.
The most basic measurement of search quality is clickthrough rate. For each search page that is shown, how often is at least one search result clicked on? This fits well with overall website conversion, showing how search works in getting a visitor to a successful result.
This sounds like great fun for Boy Scouts or any youth-oriented radio activity. Here is the description from Dan Romanchik’s blog (kb6nu.com) about teaching Morse at the Ann Arbor Mini Maker Faire.
As usual, I had my collection of keys and was teaching kids (and some adults) how to send their names in Morse Code. I have a chart of the characters (see right) that I tape to the table next to the key, and when someone approaches the table, I ask if they’d like to learn to send their name in Morse Code, and if they say yes, I ask them to tell me the first letter in their name.
After they tell me, I show them the character on the chart and then show them how to send it. Once they’ve successfully done that, I tell them to look up the rest of the letters and then send them as well. If they successfully do this, I thrust out my hand and say, “Nice to meet you, Joe (or whatever name they just sent me).” The look on some faces is priceless.
A guy fashion crisis is when they stop making the shoes I’ve been wearing for the last 12 years. That is because “guy shopping” is buying the same thing in the same size as quickly as possible. But sometimes, I get wild.
My L.L. Bean field watch finally died after the most recent battery replacement. It had a good 15 or 20 years, not quite sure how long. I’ve been wearing earlier versions of the watch for decades. This one lasted longer because it had a flat mineral crystal. I’m pretty good at banging my watch against things and breaking the crystal.
This time, I decided to level up, but it took a while to find a watch that I really liked. This radical departure is a Seiko Kinetic Field Watch with a 5M82 movement. It was surprisingly hard to figure out if it had the features I wanted, like stopping the second hand (hacking), and not replacing the battery (Seiko Kinetic uses a spinning weight to charge a capacitor).
Oh, yes, I replaced the strap with a G10 NATO strap. And surprise, there is a dedicated tool for dealing with the spring bars (instead of using a screwdriver and scratching the watch case like I’ve done forever).
I just read a very good article that takes too long to get to the point. The “tl;dr” version is that Google and Apple were competing head to head for a while, but might be evolving to complementary areas, Apple with personal experience (ResearchKit, CareKit) and Google with big data analysis (diagnosing diabetic retinopathy).
Best quote: “Throw incomprehensible amounts of information at an enormous amount of computing power and basically brute-force a treatment protocol that functions better than humans ever could.”
Of course, this doesn’t work for Kevin’s genetic syndrome. He’s the only one with that particular mutation. A single case is not exactly “incomprehensible amounts of information”. We will still need the amazing inductive instrument inside our heads.
The author misses that humans decide the target for that incomprehensible/enormous tool.
Also, don’t use “incomprehensible” about information around me. I can comprehend extremely large amounts of information. I’m OK with “number of atoms in the universe”. Yes, I took two years of philosophy, so I know about the ontological argument. Personally, I’m with Tillich and process theology.
The Scout Law, the Scout Oath, the methods and aims of Scouting; all these are things the Scout is supposed to do. What does Scouting do for the boy?
The eleventh edition of the Boy Scout Handbook started with a list of five things that Scouting promises to each Scout.
I used these promises as the outline for a Scoutmaster Minute at an Eagle Court of Honor. I talked about how the new Eagle Scouts had made the most of these promises during their years in Scouting, giving specific examples for each Scout.
The five promises aren’t in later editions, so I’ll quote the entire page here.
The long wait is over. I can finally put the 2004 Scoutmaster Handbook in the recycling and enjoy the new Troop Leader Guidebook by Mark Ray. I was embarrassed to recommend the earlier handbook, but the new one is beyond excellent.
Morse code has been in and out of the Boy Scout requirements for over a hundred years. During that time, Morse has changed from a career skill to a rewarding hobby, from a vocation to an avocation. Also during that time, radio has grown to include voice communications, data communications, and broadcast.
I’ve gathered all the requirements I could find: rank, merit badge, or skill award. Morse was a requirement for First Class for 61 years, 1911 to 1972. It returned as an option from 1979 to 1990 during the skill award period of BSA advancement.
On the occasion of the Googlebox end of life news, it is time to talk about what a weak product it really was.
Sandia Labs was an Ultraseek customer and ran a relevance experiment where Ultraseek trounced the Google Search Appliance. But first some history.
One of the assignments in my college photography class was a self portrait. I shot a series of reflective portraits, my imprint on things like my leather bike seat, the soles of my shoes, and the fading on my jeans. This is another in that series.
If you’d like to eat better on the trail, you should get this book with the favorite recipes from more than forty PCT hikers. Most trail cookbooks follow a single style, but this one is a wide-ranging trip through different styles of prep (home dehydration, supermarket food, no cook) and eating (big breakfast, vegan, high protein).
What’s Cooking on the PCT 2015 is the first of a planned yearly collection from Pacific Crest Trail thru-hikers.
I finally found the pack weight notes that I took at Philmont base camp on the morning we started on our trek in 2010.
I’ve estimated base weights by subtracting thirteen pounds. We were carrying four days of Philfood (seven pounds), and most of us were carrying three liters of water (six pounds).
The median pack weight was 42 pounds (29 pounds estimated base weight). The average was 40.1 pounds (27.1 pounds estimated base weight). Total pack weight for the crew was 401 pounds.
The troop’s MSR WhisperLite stoves just keep going, even though the Scouts lose the windscreens. But we can buy replacements. Now, the stuff sacks are just worn out, but I e-mailed MSR and they are available as parts, though not listed on the website.
So, for $10 each, our stoves have brand new stuff sacks to keep the soot off the rest of our gear. They don’t say “WhisperLite” like the old ones, but they are pretty obviously MSR stove bags.
The next time I need a backpacking stove, I’ll think about who might have spare parts for me twenty years from now. MSR will be high on the list.
Most Casual Observer 