After almost a year of procrastination I got around to finishing a Rockmite 20 radio kit. The Rockmite is a single-frequency crystal-controlled ("rock-bound") low-power CW HF radio. Say that 10 times fast!

I bought the kit sometime last year and just never finished building it. I had all of the components soldered in, but I never mounted the board in any enclosure. W5USJ, Chuck, Don, K5DW, gave me a metal enclosure during a North East Texas QRP Club meeting. It wasn't until last Friday that did anything with it. I knew the Rockmite needed a home, and here was a nice case for it. I drilled some holes in the cabinet, more or less eyeballing it. They're not perfectly aligned, but pretty close. So now the little radio is mounted, all of the connectors are soldered in and the radio is functional.

It only puts out about ½W at 14.060MHz, on the 20m amateur radio band, but because I mostly operate during the afternoons, 20m is my favorite band for now. I may need to boost myself up to a "full gallon" QRP and get a 5W amplifier like the one Chuck designed, which I might get from QRPme.

Also on my "to do" list, is to add a PicoKeyer chip to the radio which greatly adds to the experience of using it.

update: I got the PicoKeyer chip installed this afternoon. I love the features it provides. The Memory Keyer is vital for QRP work and the hands-free "Tune" feature is great for field-portable antennas. Most of the other features I don't use, but I still think the chip should be incorporated into the original design.

Very interesting and very odd. I'm sitting here writing my last paper of the semester and I get an IM.
The conversation goes as follows:

CuddlingCoho: Hey.
GrendelT: hi, who's this?
CuddlingCoho: I should ask the same. you started the conversation
GrendelT: did i? when?
CuddlingCoho: [12:56:07 AM] InstructiveCoho: Hey.
GrendelT: (11:55:59 PM) CuddlingCoho: Hey.
GrendelT: so, apparently you're on the East Coast...
CuddlingCoho: yeah... so do I show up as "CuddlingCoho"?
GrendelT yeah, and I guess I'm "Instructive"
CuddlingCoho: you show up as "InstructiveCoho"
...

From there we exchanged actual screennames. I had assumed we were somehow going through some sort of IM proxy, hence the altered screennames at the recipient's end. A little bit of Googling for "Coho" returned this tidbit of information about TheGreatHatsby.

Apparently this little game has been running around on the net for quite some time, coming and going as interests change. After speaking with "axelstudios", aka CuddlingCoho, we discovered we had both just "dugg" a story on Digg. I'm guessing this phishing bot crawls Digg's live activity page to find users that are currently on, goes to their user profile page and screenscrapes their IM screenname. The trap is set and one IM between two random strangers fires off the lulz.
Quite brilliant in my opinion. I'd like to run it for a little bit just to read some of the IM conversation logs.

I almost compeltely forgot to add the annual neodux Christmas decorations! As you can see, they're now safely in place. A gentle snow falls and a we now have a festive neodux logo.

In the real world, the lights are up on our apartment - we have the coolest light display on the block! (There's only one other apartment with lights.) Thanksgiving weekend, Jennifer and I went and cut down a tree at a local tree farm and decorated it all nice and pretty. We're all done with our Christmas shopping, and now Sirius is playing non-stop Christmas music on the Cinemagic channel. Christmas time is officially here.

And here's a great video of a dog having fun in the snow.

update: Once again, here's everyone's wishlists: Greg's wishlist, Tommy's wishlist, Jennifer's wishlist, Jeff's wishlist, Mom's wishlist

Fantastic Contraption is a great flash-based game. It allows you great flexibility in the design of your contraption. The goal of the game is explained in the tutorial - essentially all you're trying to do is get the pink ball into the pink area. Sounds simple enough, right? Each level gives you a different challenge. Either some pitfall or obstacle is in your way.

Many of you have probably already played, but I'd like to see your contraptions in the comments section of this post.

I just learned that PC Magazine will be going out of print this January. I understand why: nobody is really buying magazines much anymore. At least, nobody in the tech magazine market.

I got a free 2-year PC Magazine subscription off of a thread at SomethingAwful - or maybe I paid just a couple bucks for it. (It's good bathroom reading.) Before I got it in my mailbox, I would thumb through it occasionally while in line at the grocery store or pharmacy. I'm still guilty of this on other titles such as CPU, Maximum PC and others. I know this kind of behavior is what kills off magazines, but I can't see shelling out $5 every month for every magazine worth reading.

Sadly, another of my favorite magazines is going out of print too. World Radio magazine, a ham radio publication, was bought up by CQ Magazine. CQ will cease print production of World Radio and they claim that it will live on in an online publication. Judging by their eye-bleed websites, I can't see that lasting long at all.

PC Magazine claims they'll continue an online presence and perhaps that will bumble along for a while, but unless they can survive on online advertising alone, they're doomed. Online paid content doesn't have much of a market or future.