It was a normal August evening and I had just sat down to watch the evening news when I noticed something weird – no signal from my favorite local broadcaster, Global BC. No matter, I thought, Sometimes the over-the-air feed into the datacenter where I have my tuning equipment can be a little flaky due to a mountain in the signal path, I could switch to the yagi antenna on the roof of my house which has more gain and a better line of sight and generally works great. A few clicks later and I had a signal… sort of. Continue Reading
Technology
Linux, computers, HAM radio…. it all fits into this category! If it plugs in it will probably be filed here.
Sticking it to Fido and getting full use of my phone
One of Canada’s claims to fame has been that we pay some of the highest prices for mobile service anywhere in the world. While that generally continues to be the case, in the last several years prices have begun to come down; and it’s even possible to score deals which are comparable to the rest of the world; shocking, I know. One such deal came along that was a little too good for me to pass up – $25 monthly for 80GB of data which even included roaming to the US. Sign me up! This particular offer was from Fido Continue Reading
Who’s Mesh is it Anyway?
Back around 2020 a new word began entering the vocabulary of radio nerds around the world – LoRaWAN, or Long Range WAN – a neat protocol which sends small amounts of data large distances using tiny amounts of power. As the years went along the technology kept improving and while I was aware of it, I was a busy person and hadn’t looked too deeply into the technology, despite being a self-professed radio nerd! Fastforward to mid-2025 and I found myself dragged into a LoRa project when a friend needed me to make introductions to a tower site owner in Continue Reading
The day that never ended and the trip with too many tasks
Sitting board on a flight, I found my mind wandering and eventually landed on memory lane about a chaotic trip to Amsterdam in early 2024, which inspried me to write this blog post. Nearly a year after my last chaotic trip to Europe, I found myself shoved, unceremoniously, into an economy-class seat at the back of a KLM flight, returning home with a stack of power supplies in the overhead bin above me, and an oversize server box somewhere in the luggage hold below. Yes, this was the conclusion of yet another completely insane trip to the Netherlands, one which Continue Reading
Coronation Part 2 – The Great Do-over
If you’ve been following any of my previous posts you are probably aware of my last trip to Coronation which was, shall we say, less then a total success. As a quick recap, I found myself left with a satellite tuner server that was inaccessible and a backup Internet connection that reset itself every 3 hours. The situation was less then ideal, and I knew that if I left the status quo it would bother me endlessly until my next trip. So…. I looked at my travel budget for the year and determined I had just enough leftover to squeeze Continue Reading
Delays, Overshoots and Misfortune – Another trip to Coronation
I should have known the trip would have problems when right from the start a foggy day delayed our flight, but when travel is booked and boxes are shipped, what can you do but press forward and try to make the best out of a rough situation. It was a Tuesday morning and I found myself sitting in the lounge at Victoria’s airport with two of my good friends tracking what should have been our plane as it did loops over Hope, BC. It was a foggy morning in Victoria and our plane wasn’t able to land until the fog Continue Reading
Of Antennas, Trees and Cranes – Just Another Tuesday
Being heavily involved in the local amateur radio community has resulted in some interesting adventures, but one for the memory books took place on an otherwise unassuming Tuesday in September. For the past few years I’ve been tangentially involved with the University of Victoria’s amateur radio club – helping out with projects and the administration of the lab’s network. I’ve become a reasonably well known fixture in the lab and so it was not a huge surprise when I was invited to help out with an antenna install on the director’s property on Sidney Island. Sidney Island is an 8.6 Continue Reading
Review of the Unihertz Atom XL
It was after I nearly dropped my phone during an early morning walk while trying to juggle an umbrella and operate my cell phone one-handed that I came to a conclusion – my phone was too damn big! Back in ye ‘olden times (around 2007) I purchased my first cell phone which was a flip phone. At the time small was in, the smaller your cellphone was the cooler it was and the devices fit in a pocket with ease. Not long after, Apple would shake up the phone industry when they released the first iPhone with a 3.5″ touchscreen. Continue Reading
A Trip to Coronation
As I sit on a plane to Vancouver, over 24 hours after my original scheduled departure, with at least four more hours of buses and ferries ahead of me, I find myself contemplating the past 6 days of ridiculousness and how I managed to get here. But, before we get to the day of travel hell, let’s start at the beginning – with a small town of just under 900 people named Coronation. I found myself the owner of a small, 2800 sq ft plot of land in Eastern Alberta. My plan for the property was to set it up Continue Reading
Guns, Grub and a Satellite Ground Station – My trip to Alberta
I am sitting in a restaurant surrounded by co-workers. A server comes comes by with a skewer of beef and looks at me; As I ponder whether I trying to fit more delicious meat into my already full stomach was a good idea, one of my co-workers nodes ‘yup’ and another slice is loaded onto my plate. This was my first evening of a week in Calgary. Things had been a bit challenging of late at work. The company was growing from a small operation to a medium-sized business and was experiencing all the associated growing pains that go along Continue Reading