Less is more
My blog reading tool of choice for a long time used to be NetNewsWire. It’s a great piece of software and a great tool – I had purchased it after trialing it for a short time. But, being on a 2-way satellite link with a finite download quota, I began to resent the amount of bandwidth being consumed by NetNewsWire as it went about its business of checking for new blog articles every 2 hours. To be factually correct, much of the problem was due to bloggers not being aware of, or not being able to utilise, their ability to turn on data compression when their RSS feed was being checked.
My solution to this issue was to turn to Google Reader (again). I had tried Google Reader some time previously but, at the time, I didn’t like its user interface. And some time before that I had used Bloglines as an online reader before likewise becoming frustrated by its user interface.
In the intervening time Google had released a new version of their Reader. And I liked it. Google looked after the periodic checking for new blog articles – my own bandwidth use was reduced. Google Reader used Ajax to feed me only a couple of handfuls of blog articles at a time, thus trickling the data to me rather than spiking my bandwidth use.
And them came feed overload. Each time I came across an interesting blog article from a person whose blog I wasn’t subscribed to, I would immediately subscribe in the hope of continuing to find similarly interesting articles.
After I had reached some 535 feed subscriptions I came to the realisation that the signal to noise ration wasn’t especially good. I was having to wade through far too many articles that I wasn’t interested in before coming across something that was of interest.
So began the Great Cull.
Over a period of weeks I unsubscribed from over 200 blog feeds – I’m currently subscribed to about 320. That’s manageable. It now takes me less time to reading a larger number of interesting articles. I win.
Google Earth mashup: rain radar overlays
I previously wrote about my first attempt at a Google Earth (GE) “mashup” where I’d overlaid a Bureau of Meteorology rain radar image over a panel from Google Earth.
I’ve now modified the mashup to overlay two rain radar images side-by-side. I’ve taken the Grafton and Moree images and overlaid them over their respective ground areas. Writing the KML code was trivial; most of the time required to do this was in manually registering (aligning) the radar image over the ground area. while it’s not perfect, it’s adequate for my purposes.
To view and manipulate my mashup, download the KML file, save it to disk, then double-click it (or “open� it directly from GE).
Here’s what it should look like:
It might take a while to actually see some rain on this image – we don’t get all that much at this time of year.
Google Earth mashup
I’ve only recently begun exploring Google Earth (GE). The Google Gods haven’t yet blessed the pane in which we live, it’s still in low-res, but the panes around us are in magnificent hi-res detail. I can even see a few graves in the neighbouring Hillgrove Cemetery now.
I’ve also been reading about people creating “mashupsâ€? – the combining of information, maps in this case, from more than one source.
My first attempt at creating a mashup involved mixing the Bureau of Meteorology‘s (BoM) rain radar image for this area with Google Earth’s view of New England and surrounding area. My mashup updates the radar image every 10 minutes. Unfortunately, it doesn’t rain around here that much at this time of year so it might take a while to view the results at their glorious best.
One benefit of overlaying the rain radar image on GE is that the viewer can take advantage of the 3D and pan, tilt, and zoom features to look at the rain from every conceivable angle 
To view and manipulate my mashup, download the KML file, save it to disk, then double-click it (or “open� it directly from GE).
This is what you can expect, rain permitting:
Currently listening to … The Audreys
Having managed to get a reliable digital TV signal, I’ve been looking at the additional content that’s now available to me. One show that’s available on the ABC’s digital only channel, ABC2, is music program Dig TV. A segment that I caught was an interview with South Australian band “The Audreysâ€?. This band is described, on their web site, as being “alt-country popâ€?. It’s not a genre that I could say that I’m intimately familiar with, but after listening to them performing a single piece, “Banjo & violinâ€?, I’m hooked.
A couple of days later I nipped into the ABC Centre in town at lunchtime and purchased the only copy of The Audrey’s CD that was there (to be honest I was surprised to find that they had a copy at all – given that there’s not a huge selection of music available in that particular bookshop in the first place).
As inadequate as my music vocabulary and reviewer experience is, that’s not going to stop me having a go at writing a mini-rewiew.
Now, having had the opportunity to listen to all the tracks several times, I’d class this CD as having a higher than average number of tracks that I rate highly (compared the other CDs in my collection).
Taasha Coates’s voice is described as being “smokyâ€?. Personally, I think “smokyâ€? has connotations of roughness and stinging – I’d suggest that “mellowâ€? and “sultryâ€? would be better adjectives (albeit not on every track). Perhaps the banjo of Tristan Goodall has swung the sound towards alt-country (and/or bluegrassy?) – I’m not one for rigorously classifying music into genres, though, I just like what I like. My musical taste is quite eclectic as a result.
The CD is called “Between Last Night and Us�, and my favourite tracks, thus far, would have to be “You & Steve McQueen�, and “Banjo and violin�. The former and a few other tracks can be sampled on their web sites. Why are they my favourite tracks? No idea. I enjoy music based on the total sound rather than, say, what the lyrics are saying to me.
The Audreys are currently on a European tour, then they’re off to Canada. They tour Australia during July/August/September 2006.
The booklet that accompanies the CD has some very nice, quirky, faux-1960′s(?)-Australia photography accompanying it (I’d suggest that may not have been photographer Wend Lear’s goal though, just how I interpret the style).
Resources:
- ABC2
- Dig TV
- The Audreys
- Banjo and violin (Real player, broadband only, perhaps only for 7 days after broadcast)
- The Audreys infoblog (low signal to noise ratio)
- The CD “Between Last Night and Us� at the ABC Shop, and at Amazon
Giving digital TV an audition
I bought a cheap standard-definition digital TV set-top box (STB) about six months ago when it was “on specialâ€? at the post-christmas sales. I wanted to find out a bit more about such a thing. Once home I tried it out only to discover that the TV antenna masthead pre-amplifier kept overdriving to such an extent that the digital TV channels (only one channel removed from the analogue TV channels) were useless. I couldn’t get a strong enough signal on the digital channels because the analogue signals interfered with them.
Now, some months on, I switched the STB inline again. To my surprise it now works perfectly. I’m working on the theory that the problem is temperature related and that now, because it’s winter, there’s no cause for the pre-amp to act badly.
So, with a working STB, I began to work examine what digital TV is all about. We only currently get two TV stations transmitting digital signals in this area – ABC and SBS. The ABC is transmitting its analogue service plus its relatively new, digital only, ABC2 channel. SBS transmits its normal analogue service plus a foreign TV-news service. In addition, SBS also transmits a high-definition version of its analogue program – I can’t view this though as my STB only handles standard-definition services.
Both the ABC and SBS also transmit two radio stations. SBS relays its two analogue radio services; the ABC transmits its digital-only “Dig� and “Dig Jazz� services.
According to the STB I’m receiving the signals at about 40% of full strength – nevertheless neither the audio nor the video show signs of loss of data. We’re just under 40 km from the TV transmitter which explains the low signal strength. That and the hundreds of gum trees above the height of the TV antenna.
I suspect, however, that unless I replace the masthead pre-ampifier, I’ll experience problems again once the temperature starts to rise in 4 or 5 months time. I’ll need to research higher-quality masthead pre-amps rather than the common but cheap amplifier that was installed when the house was built a few years ago.
References:
ABC
Dig radio
Dig Jazz
SBS
Digital Broadcasting Australia
Holy iciness, batman!
I’ve been across in Western Australia for 10 days – it’s not too cold there. On my first day back on the Tablelands the overnight temperature dipped to -8 degC (18 degF) – and there was still ice on the dam at 1 pm as I passed by.
[Woolbrook, not too far south of us, dipped to -11 degC (12 degF)].
Outbacker antenna to the outback
Later this year I’ll be heading west into the Australian outback (including the Birdsville Track) for what will be about a 5000 km (3100 mile) round trip. It’s an opportunity to take my ham-radio equipment along for fun and safety (and see what I might be able to do on 2m SSB (Aircraft Enhanced mode) and digital modes). For HF I have a Terlin Outbacker mobile antenna but it’s not been used much to date. Last weekend I attached it to the bull-bar on my Hi-Lux truck and gave it a test.
I don’t have a permanent mobile installation so the setup was, of necessity, rather primitive. I used an Icom IC-706 MkIIG, and an MFJ desktop antenna tuner sitting on the passenger seat to feed the antenna. I don’t have any earth strap installed to the vehicle chassis yet, so was a bit worried about the effects that would have. The vehicle has a diesel engine so that probably helps to keep the noise level down.
With everything plugged in, and the engine running, the S-meter sat with zero noise level so I was happy. I made a quick contact on 40m just to get a signal report. I worked VK5ZKT/P near Adelaide ( a distance over well over 1000km) so I was happy with that result too.
Over the coming months I’ll set about upgrading the setup to give a slightly more permanent mobile installation.
[Ref: Outbacker antenna info can be found here].
User support? Not!
I think I need to create a new blog category specifically for my experiences with BorderNET. Now, I’m under no delusion that BorderNET’s customer support is any better or worse than other ISP service desk, but…
Last week, after experiencing several overnight outages I called their support desk phone number. After hanging on for a while it timed out and a recorded message asked me to email my query instead. So I duly sent in my email. Today, being some days later, I received an email which didn’t respond to my query but said that they had a heavy load of emails to reply to, and could I phone their support desk if my original query was urgent.
Does anybody else see the problem with their circular logic?
