Baofeng UV-82C

Baofeng UV-82C where "C" equals commercial. Miklor has a full review here.

Highlights include being able to prevent field programming (and thus fully FCC compliant and the dual PTT can be set to a single PTT mode.

Border Check

Your papers, please.


Via Say Uncle

Middle Out Backups

Anyone doing backups in the modern era probably already knows about reverse incremental backups, but after watching yesterday's Silicon Valley, I'm going to invent the "middle out" backup and make millions!

BaofengTech Charts

I had posted about one of the BaofengTech charts a couple of months ago, but Nate sent me a note about some other charts and updates as well. He sent me the note in the context of this post by Hans - where Baofeng is adding to the confusion by introducing another name to the mix, Pofung.

All of the following links are to the BaofengTech website and they might help you eliminate any of that confusion. (Bonus points for BaofengTech for allowing the charts to be downloaded as an image or PDF file.)

General Radio Descriptions

Comparison Chart

FAQ

Firmware Guide

Dual Climate Control

While I don't find dual climate control systems in the relatively small confines of the typical cabin in a car to be especially useful, I know some people do. Long before such a thing existed, I recall a small deflector my grandfather wired to the central vent in his car. Granny was always hot and needed extra air. He was always cold and didn't want it. A simple thing - a thin piece of wood and a small wire - but effective none the less.

Now, if he had just gotten a utility patent on the idea.

Mary Meeker's State of the Web

Her annual report on trends... I found the following slides the most interesting.

Moore's Law type trends...

I'm surprised that DVR/VOD/DVD is only 23%.

Compute/storage get cheaper. Devices get smaller. Devices become more ubiquitous.

The Radios

I've been remiss and not kept "The Radios" page up to date. I went back through the blog and think I got the ones I had missed.

Brick O'Lore After Dark

A joke I ran across...

James Bond walks into a bar and takes a seat next to a very attractive woman. He gives the woman a quick glance and then casually takes a look at his watch. The woman notices this and asks, “Is your date running late?” “No,” he replies. “Q’s just given me a state-of-the-art watch and I was testing it out.” Intrigued, the woman asks, “A state-of-the-art watch? What’s so special about it?” Bond coolly explains, “It uses alpha waves to talk telepathically.” The lady says, “So what’s it telling you now?” “Well, it says you’re not wearing any panties,” says Bond. The woman giggles and replies, “Well, it must be broken because I am wearing panties!” Bond shakes his head, taps his watch and says, “Damn thing’s an hour fast.”

Tiny 2M Receiver

I was running the other day while listening to my iPod and was wishing I had a 2M receiver in that form factor. I thought it would be nice to listen to have the option of listening to the repeaters. (Even a UV-3R would be too big for my ideal running companion.) My 6th generation iPod Nano uses the headphone wire as the antenna, but I prefer the physical buttons of my 2nd generation iPod Shuffle. Being able to easily start or stop a scan while on the move would be great. And while I am dreaming, I want to use CHIRP to load the repeater frequencies.

Anybody seen anything close to what I'm talking about? Am I the only one that would be interested in this sort of device?

(This reddit post got me thinking about this again. I think about lots of things while I run, but that's not the best time for me to record them for later.)

The Most Powerful OS

7/7 The most powerful OS in the world is still the human being, that’s what drives us into the more personal computing era
— Satya Nadella (@satyanadella) May 28, 2014