Tuesday, November 12, 2013

Chrome - Audio in Which Tab?

Excellent... a feature to identify which Chrome tab is playing audio. I'm bad about having lots of tabs open and sometimes a page will auto-play a video. This will eliminate a lot of searching and scrolling to find the offender.

Not How I Would Do It

Guy posts a link to a survey on a Yahoo Group and the list owner kicks him out:
"I think you need to unsubscribe from this list of all you want is to mooch a survey. Forget that, I'll unsubscribe you myself."

Library Box

I like the idea of a portable library like the Library Box. You could load it up with manuals or references for Field Day and easily share them. I've been to family gatherings in the middle of the mountains where there was no internet access, so you could share pictures with the extended family. One of the use cases the website mentions is providing students with files via the Library Box as a temporary intranet as the data may otherwise be blocked by the school's firewall. Obviously, this doesn't replace what I do with a cloud file service (Dropbox, SkyDrive, etc.), but it provides some basic functionality in a very flexible way.



Via AR-15

Swedes Closing Unneeded Prisons

Clearly they need more laws to help get that utilization rate up!

Thursday, November 7, 2013

Game of Thrones Deal

Wow! You can get all five of the A Song of Ice and Fire series (aka Game of Thrones) for less than $20! These are my favorite books of all time. I've got them all in hard back - including a signed copy of A Feast for Crows, but I may still have to get the Kindle versions. I suspect I will want to reread them when George RR Martin finally gets the next book out.

Tuesday, November 5, 2013

Leixen VV-808S: Available Now

The VV-808SV (VHF) is here. The VV-808SU (UHF) is here. This is what the site says about the difference between the 808 and the 808S along with a warning (that I still think is directed at me):
1. Maybe many people ask me what is the difference between VV-808S and the old version VV-808. To be honest, it is just update some bugs and add some functions. It make the radio more convenience for use.
2. Please don't disassemble the radio yourself even if you are a seasoned ham, because you might broken the radio in accident. And you won't entitled for the after service since you disassemble the radio.
They updated the feature list with the following information/changes:
6. PTT ID (Voice broadcast PTT ID. NEW:Display 14 Digits)
31. Input frequency by using hand microphone (Up/Down can be set by the buttons of the side of the Microphone)
37. Power Supply: 12V/24V.

Leixen VV-808: Red 245 MHz Thailand Version

Leixen is offering a red Thailand version of the VV-808 in 245 MHz. I only see the listing for a bulk order of 30 at $95 each, so $2,860 total.



Friday, November 1, 2013

Baofeng UV-3R: TRX1846 and Software Control

An anonymous poster left this link to a project to control a UV-3R via software.

HF-One: HF-One MKII Juma TRX2A

YO9IRF offers some insight on the HF-One MKII:
"When you see the internals though, you will realise this isn't something completely new: it is actually a repacked Juma TRX2A made a few years ago by OH2NLT and OH7SV and initially sold for EUR 500 (wich is around US$ 680), sporting AD9851 direct digital synthesis (also used in the X1M), polyphase filtering and a PIC 30F5014 microcontroller. It works from 11 to 15V, takes 500mA on RX and 3A at the maximum 10W TX output, reciever sensitivity is -130dBm and the IMD3 dynamic range is claimed at an impressive over 100dB."