calum.org Accept, or change

Well, life has a funny way of working. I had planned to take more time, and be more choosy when buying a laptop, but something came up, which meant I had to get one fast.

So I plumped for the Acer TravelMate 5720, with 4GB RAM, ordered from eBuyer, who a: I've used before, and b:, seemed to be the cheapest.

And it's a good-'un.

So. The time has come for me to buy a laptop. I want it for coding, development, and various other bits and bobs. And of course, I have no intention of running anything other than Linux on it.

I can hear spacemen. They talk to me. But they don't answer when I talk back.

No, I'm not hallucinating.

For a long time now, most (if not all) of the astronauts that have gone up into space, to the International Space Station at least have been licenced amateurs. Indeed they used it for "emergency messaging while [the] Mir [space station] was in distress."

It has been said that all of mankind's greatest knowledge is held in sigs. And if it hadn't, it has now.

Slashdot is a site that allows users to put a sig at the bottom of their posts - some of these can be funny, ironic, or insightful.

My favourite is probably: "God is dead" - Nietzsche, 1882. "Nietzsche is dead" - God, 1900

I have saved a few of these over time, and have made them into a fortune file, which you can see yourself.

Ever wanted your own token based authentication, similar to RSA's SecurID?

I have written an implementation of a similar thing for phones and PDAs that run Java.

You can find it, and more info at http://mobfob.calum.org/

Amateur radio is a pretty cool hobby.

You can talk, send data, morse code (YouTube: Is morse faster than SMS?), pictures, or live TV to anyone all around the world.
You can do it from your home, car, or using a handheld in a tent on top of a hill.

Well, another itch needed to be scratched.

I wanted something that would teach me morse code, and I thought the best way was just to have something on my phone, which would play random codes to me, and then tell me what they were.

Couldn't find one, so wrote my own.

I used the cwpcm program from cwtext to generate the tones, and Audacity to record my dulcet tones.

It's tested on a Nokia N80 and an N95, but will probably work on quite a few more phones.

I have written a little Java app for mobile phones with GPS that will calculate the Maidenhead Locator Grid that you are in.
This system of identifying location is used in Amateur Radio, as it cuts down on the number of characters used to encode the information, something very useful when using Morse Code.

Every time I hit upon this problem, I curse the person who decided this.

If you're not sure of what I am talking about, it's the rule in Linux (and other related OSes) that prevents a non-root user from binding (i.e. setting up a server) on a TCP or UDP port below 1024.

Well, it's time for a good whinge.

I used to buy quite a lot of stuff from Amazon. DVDs, CDs, and books. Sometimes I'd "save them all up" into one order, or sometime, I'd just buy one thing, as the mood took me.

Then they changed from using the Royal Mail to using the "Home Delivery Network".

I have ordered one thing since, and the reason is this.