Reverse a Binary Stream Using Busybox

Today I had the need to reverse a binary stream using only bash and commonly-available command-line utilities. Not tac, sed, or rev, which are all line-oriented utilities that work best on ASCII data. I needed something that I could trust with binary data. This is what I came up with. Feel free to point out […]

Playing with GPS

I must have spent too much time hearing the other Elecraft K3 owners talk about fancy precision oscillator stuff because when the idea got into my head that I could make a really ‘simple’ embedded NTP server with the bonus side-effect of a GPS disciplined oscillator, I could not get the idea out […]

Lego CW Iambic Paddle

As I read the April 2011 edition of QST, they featured a picture of a CW key made of Legos on page 20. I thought to myself that this was the kind of project I was up to. Rather than a straight key like N1LF made, I decided to go with an iambic paddle. You […]

DDRR for the car

I got bitten by a little APRS bug this week, right after I finished assembling my K3 while waiting for the power supply and coax to arrive. I wanted an antenna we could mount on the top of Lauren’s minivan for any roadtrips we might take. But because it is not MY car, there are […]

Foray into HF

I have been saving my pennies (er, dollars) for almost 18 months so I could buy myself a shiny new HF base station radio without breaking the bank. I ordered stuff this last Monday in hopes that it would get here in time for my birthday. I was pleasantly surprised at how fast Elecraft […]

A USB CW Keyboard

After getting my amateur radio license without having to pass a CW test, I felt a little bit cheated, so I vowed that I would learn CW and do my best to help keep it alive. After all, that is one of the two things that I remember about ham radio from my childhood (beeping […]

Kenwood TH-D72 and Linux

I recently found a buyer for my Icom IC-92AD, which enabled me to buy one of the new Kenwood TH-D72 radios. This is my first GPS-enabled device and a new radio to boot. I am thrilled. I got it in the mail in just enough time to scan through the instruction manual to figure out […]

Tame your bash history

I am a packrat, but I do like a bit of order. This makes maintaining my bash history difficult. There are some commands that I use frequently that seem to fill up my history file making it hard to keep some of the lesser used, yet very important commands in the history. Finally sick of […]

The Perfect Spammer

Going through the daily blogroll this morning, I came upon a comic that could not be more true. A while back I posted on Combating Spambots. Since I implemented that anti-spam scheme, I have not seen a single piece of spam come through. It is beautiful. XKCD has posted an alternative method, which really would […]

The Emperor’s New RF Exposure Calculator

It has been twelve days since I made my RF Exposure Calculator available for all to use. I admit that there were a few bugs in it when I first released it. But nothing that didn’t get fixed within a day or two. You see, it being open source and all, I figured I should […]