mattbk.com – Matt Burton-Kelly's home on the web

What’s up, Grand Forks and East Grand Forks?

Cory Doctorow explained last month, quoting Aaron Cope (highlighting mine):

The internet was inspired by the end-to-end principle, the idea that the network’s first duty was to transmit data from willing senders to willing receivers, as efficiently and reliably as possible. That principle made it possible for whole swathes of people to connect with one another. As Cope writes, openness “was not, and has never been, a guarantee of a receptive audience or even any audience at all.” But because it was “easy and cheap enough to put something on the web,” you could “leave it there long enough for others to find it.”

This is a variation on the more succinct thing I saw on fedi the other day that ~~(paraphrasing) “a blog post is a query through time to find similar people,”~~ “A blog post is a very long and complex search query to find fascinating people and make them route interesting stuff to your inbox,” which I thought was nice. I~~f I find the source, I will update this post.~~ Updated!

To that end, here are a few things that don’t warrant their own posts (even though that might be better SEO), but that I’m interested in, if other people locally are:

Community Solar in East Grand Forks
Strong Towns East Grand Forks
Strong Towns Grand Forks

So if you’re into these ideas or something similar, know that I am too! Drop a comment and let’s make something happen.

Update: Speaking of community solar here in East Grand Forks, I ran across this page, with a map that highlights EGF, but with some questionable conclusions:

Hydroelectric
Two of MMPA’s member communities, East Grand Forks and Olivia, purchase a portion of their power from the Western Area Power Administration. Because it produces no waste and causes no carbon emissions, hydroelectric power is a sustainable form of energy.

The WAPA page has this to say (highlight added):

Western is a Federal agency under the Department of Energy that markets and transmits wholesale electrical power from 56 Federal hydropower plants and one coal-fired plant.

Hmm…

Fixing the Ol’ Samsung Dishwasher

Long story short, it was really loud. This post came to the rescue: https://tech.akom.net/index.php?url=archives/132-Replacing-Dishwasher-Circulation-Pump-Bearings-without-buying-a-whole-new-unit.html.

I had to grind down the outside angles on the gear puller so it would grab the stuck-on bearing right (thanks to this comment for the suggestion: “Jeremy on 2022-05-05 14:29”).

Here’s the motor I replaced the bearings on:

Some other resources:

Northern Plains Athletics: End of an Era

From roughly November 2013 (I think I ordered the domain on Thanksgiving) to early 2020 (we know what happened then), I sunk a bunch of time into an endurance event calendar/map called Northern Plains Athletics. It wasn’t used by anyone very much. Soon the website will be gone completely. I’m letting the domain name go free and removing the site from my server. The Twitter account has already been deleted.

This is bittersweet, but I’ve been involved in too many things beyond the time I should have quit them. Maybe NPA should never have happened, but it did let me learn a lot about Drupal and the races happening in the North Dakota/South Dakota/Minnesota/Manitoba region. Perhaps if I’d spent more time traveling and less time with code, I would have been happier–but now I know more about sunk costs.

Because I still have a hard time letting go, I’ve archived the blog posts here, under the Northern Plains Athletics category. It was nice to skim through them again, and maybe some of the contributed race reports will be helpful to someone else.

Finally, here is a CSV file containing the several hundred events (or event versions, because the data structure changed over time) I ended up with. Names, locations, descriptions, date last updated, stuff like that. So if you want some data to play with, or are just looking for a race, this might help. Click here to download.

Get out and race!
Matt

Greasemonkey script to hide “Hot Network Questions” on StackOverflow

It’s not that they’re annoying, it’s that they’re attention-grabbing. I’m trying to get work done here!

// ==UserScript==
// @name _Remove Hot Network Questions
// @include https://stackoverflow.com/*
// @require http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/2.1.0/jquery.min.js
// @grant GM_addStyle
// ==/UserScript==
//- The @grant directive is needed to restore the proper sandbox.

/*--- Use the jQuery contains selector to find content to remove.
Beware that not all whitespace is as it appears.
*/

$("div[id$='hot-network-questions']").remove()


//-- Or use .hide(); to just hide the content.

Mostly from: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/53839574/how-to-remove-a-div-with-a-changing-id-via-tampermonkey-greasemonkey#comment94527524_53839574. See also https://mattbk.com/2020/09/how-to-ignore-port-on-the-grand-forks-herald-website/.

CAT control serial port for Xiegu 6100 in JS8Call on macOS 10.14.6

(Long title, but had to cover all the bases)

For my radio, it was `/dev/cu.usbmodem53620077003`. Trying different order of operations (plug radio first, then start JS8Call vs start JS8Call, then plug radio) may have been what I needed to get the right serial port to show up in the list. Below is a screenshot of all the settings that seem to work.

Following this post by HB9TXB Branko, I did also check the list of serial ports using this command in the terminal: `ls -lrt /dev/tty*`.

Delete Windows files that match a filename pattern with “Everything”

Everything is a tool I use daily to replace Windows search, which is painfully slow. In addition to indexing files by name, it allows you to run normal file operations on the resulting list.

I ended up with thousands of files starting with “._” after a OneDrive migration. The eventual solution (after looking for CMD commands) was to just use Everything to search, select all the files, right-click, and select “Delete.”

Winlink Express 1.6.6.0 and Icom IC-7300

Just like everyone else, I’m going to put down the settings that work for me, but they might not work for you. VARA was easier to get working with appropriate CAT control (changing frequency and keying PTT), but ARDOP was a pain. Maybe this will help someone else.

These settings are DIFFERENT than ones shown by SA7SKY here (at least, that’s where I found a copy). Looks like they were using Winlink Express 1.5.11.3. The images below are from 1.6.6.0.

With these settings, you cannot have flrig running at the same time, because flrig and Winlink are trying to use the same COM port. I’m still working on a solution to this.

Above, note that “Enable RTS” and “Enable DTR” are checked (differs from SA7SKY). Baud is set to match my IC-7300.

Below, the ARDOP_Win_Virtual_TNC window opens when you start the ARDOP session, but it is usually minimized by default.My settings above match SA7SKY.Above, “Use Radio’s Internal Sound Card” is checked (you’ll get an “are you sure” popup if you choose the Icom 7300 and don’t check this box), SA7SKY does not have it checked.

QRP Radio Fun

At some point over the winter, I started reading Thomas’s posts at QRPer.com. It may have been after I listened to one of his guest appearances on Ham Radio Workbench.

Long story short, last week I got a new Xiegu X6100 from Radioddity. I’ve been playing with it and a MFJ-1984LP EFHW antenna in the front yard for a few days now, and it’s been a hoot to chase POTA activators using only 5W. It’s definitely something I can do for 5 (let’s be serious, more like 15) minutes at a time in between other things.

Some early notes, maybe to follow up on in the future:

There are at least two groups.io lists for this radio, either of which might help you find an answer to a question. Please note that if you haven’t bought the radio yet, stay away from posts before Spring 2022–the early adopters had some issues that no longer apply.
- https://groups.io/g/xiegu-x6100/
- https://groups.io/g/x6100/
The thin poly line used by arborists can burn when you release it from your hand, maybe use gloves when tossing (or get a lighter throw bag).
My antenna is allegedly good for a bunch of bands, but I’m also not sure how the tuner will tell me that it can’t tune.
The detent in the main tuning knob is either too small for my finger, or the whole knob is too small. I tend to just roll my finger around the edge to spin fast.
The manual is useful to expand out the menu item names, but you need to know a bit about radios to know what they actually mean.
Some weird “birdies” that swoop in from the sides, on some bands. See notes in the groups.io posts.
CW decode doesn’t always work, but you may have to toggle between CW and CWR by pressing the mode button. Or it’s random chance that I got it to work.
My attic fan dipole, although it covers everything from 40m to 10m bands, is not very sensitive on receive at all (or more likely is catching too much noise from inside the house). Yesterday I could see stations all over 20m when operating outside on the X6100, but only a few of them inside on the IC-7300 (which should have better receive in general).
- I don’t think this is because of bad coax, but it could be. I made some notes on my Mastodon account (that I need to write down somewhere else) about testing the IC-7300 with the EFHW and checking the noise floor.