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Month: December 2021

The Movie Going Experience in 2021

Published December 29, 2021 by Dave Nelson

I went to 2 movies this week at a local AMC Theatre, the first one in a standard theater and the second in IMAX. The theater is understaffed and the employees appear to be undertrained and unmanaged.

Unlike many newer theaters the first movie uncomfortable seats that did not recline and were in a very upright position that I found uncomfortable. The sound was mediocre and the picture was small. I don’t understand why the picture was so small, there was a lot more screen available, but the curtains were not pulled back and only three-quarters of the available screen was being used.

The second movie’s was much larger, being IMAX it should be. In this case the picture was too large, everything had the Screen Door Effect to a distracting degree. All of the text and where there was a hard line of strong contrast the ant-aliasing stair-stepping was extreme.

The audio before the movie began measured 82dB on my Apple watch, well into the “Loud” zone, it was uncomfortable enough that I had to put in my earbuds to block out some of it.

I won’t be going back to that theater. I may not be going back to any theater. With all of the streaming options and my home theater, the “Big Screen” doesn’t offer anything for me anymore.

MoviesSad

Lost Planet Homicide by Larry Correia

Published December 29, 2021 by Dave Nelson

Lost Planet Homicide by Larry Correia

I bought Lost Planet Homicide from Audible and listened to it using the Audible app.

Larry Correia always gets my attention and Gun Runners has a good start with Lost Planet Homicide. His world building skills shine here with a gritty crime riddled world settled long ago by people hoping to live in paradise, instead they end up barely being able to survive on hostile world where the air will kill them.

I enjoyed the story and characters, but it is not in the same class as the Grimnoir Chronicles or Monster Hunter books, but it is a good book and I look forward to more.

From the publisher:

A lost colony planet, a perplexing murder, and a dogged homicide cop in this Audible Original story from best-selling author Larry Correia.

When the biggest colony ship in human history was sent to settle a paradise world, an accident hurtled it deep into uncharted space. A thousand light years from Earth, with no way home and no way to call for help, the colonists’ only hope for survival was the one barely habitable planet in range, a nightmare world they named Croatoan. Landing on the only five mountain peaks tall enough to rise above the lethal acid clouds, the settlers carved a civilization from the rock.

A hundred years later, Five Points has grown into a city of corruption and violence. With powerful corporations ruling the surface domes and criminal syndicates running the caverns below, murder is just the cost of doing business.

So when a Special Magistrate is found dissolving in a protein vat, it barely registers – until DCI Lutero Cade, the last honest cop in Five Points, catches the case. What he finds could threaten the colony’s very existence.
Or, at the very least, Cade himself.

©2021 Larry Correia (P)2021 Audible Originals, LLC.Z

I enjoyed Lost Planet Homicide and rate it a 6 out of 10.

AudioBooksFiction

Privateer Tales by Jamie McFarlane

Published December 25, 2021 by Dave Nelson

Rookie PrivateerAfter reading Jamie McFarlane’s Junkyard Pirate series I went looking for more and found Rookie Privateer the first in his Privateer Tales series. Like the others, I read these on a Kindle Paperwhite.

I made it through the first 12 books in the series one after another during March, April, and May and stalled out on number 13. I plan on getting back into them later. Amazingly there are now 19 books in the series.

This series is pure space adventure following Nick, Liam, and Tabith from humble beginnings on a space station to traveling across the universe confronting hostile aliens and violent pirates.

I hihgly recommend the series to anyone who loves a good sci-fi adventure and rate it a 9 out of 10.

BooksFictionHappy

Ham Radio Morse Code Oscillators

Published December 21, 2021 by Dave Nelson

4 oscillators
My 4 Oscillators

In my efforts to learn and use Morse Code I bought a straight key and an iambic paddle. The straight key is an MFJ-553 https://mfjenterprises.com/products/mfj-553 , in my opinion it’s an inexpensive choice without being “junk”, I doubt I will ever use it on the air. The iambic paddle I chose is an HA8KF magnetic paddle, unlike the MFJ key this one is a work of art and will be the key I use the most until something different comes along.

Oscillators like the ones below are used with keys to produce the sounds that we know as Morse Code, the keys only create electrical contacts and maybe some clicking sounds, the oscillators make the dits and dahs for you without using a radio. They are great for training and practice by yourself or with a group.

Oscillators for Straight Keys

NFARL Oscillator
North Fulton Amateur Radio League Morse Code Practice Kit

NFARL Morse Code Practice Oscillator – a very simple practice oscillator with a built-in touch module that acts as a straight key so you can practice without an external key. This oscillator is about as basic as an oscillator can be, it includes a mono input for a straight key, a buzzer for tone, and 2 CR2032 batteries which will power it for a very long time.

The best thing about the NFARL Morse Code Practice Oscillator is it is very easy to assemble and can be used without an external key so it makes a great “learn how to solder” project.


Nightfire Electronics CPO – it appears that the one I have is no longer sold, the version being sold now, “Rev C”, does not include a speaker. This another simple oscillator that uses a 9v battery for power and a 1.5” speaker for output.

For a simple oscillator I really like this one, once assembled and put into an Altoids tin it works great and is very loud.

Oscillators that Support Iambic


Hamgadgets Ultra PicoKeyer – the PicoKeyer is so much more than an oscillator or code practice tool. It comes in a great molded case with 3d-printed front and back panels, much nicer than putting it into an Altoids tin. You can listen to it through the built-in speaker or plug in an external speaker. It can even be plugged into a radio as a keyer. It includes a QSO counter for contesting… and so much more. As a beginner who doesn’t have all of the letters down I find changing the settings of the Ultra PicoKeyer challenging as it’s only method of telling you what setting you are changing is through Morse Code.

I really like all the features of the Ultra PicoKeyer and expect that I may find a use for them as I become more proficient in Morse Code.


QRPGuys Code Trainer – a very straight-forward code trainer oscillator with the added feature of “sending” practice codes. I haven’t used the sending feature yet as I am still learning the individual characters. I really like that all of the components are through-hole components that were easy to solder, it was a little more challenging than the NFARL CPO, but not much harder.

The QRPGuys Code Trainer is currently my favorite oscillator. When plugged into my paddles and external speakers it sounds great, much better than the other oscillators, and it is what I am using for Long Island CW Club classes on Zoom.

I think all of these oscillators are pretty great and that as I learn Morse Code and my skills improve, I will find uses for all of them. I am keeping an eye out for a Morserino-32, it seems like it is a great tool for learning Morse Code.

HamHam RadioHappy

Synology DiskStation DS1621+

Published December 21, 2021 by Dave Nelson

My Drobo died…

<sigh>

I tried everything, replaced drives, cleaned it out, banged on it, everything I could think of and every idea I could find online. But it’s dead. It did last 7 years, but it sure feels like it should have lasted longer.

Drobo has not had any devices for sale for a long time now, and in fact they don’t even have anyone answering the phones anymore. So time to look for an alternative.

After a lot of research I narrowed my choices down to a Synology device and more research drove me to picking a DS1621+ for the following reasons.

  1. 6 Drive Bays
  2. 4 bondable Ethernet ports
  3. Up to 32 GB of RAM
  4. SSD Read and Write Caches
  5. The ability to run VMs and Docker containers

Coming from the 5-bay Drobo I was excited about having 6 bays, if I was buying it now I would have bought the 8-bay as it is not much more expensive. But 6 bays is pretty good and gives me plenty of space with Synology’s SHR single disk redundancy.

Bonding Ethernet ports can be a really big deal, it doesn’t make copying or writing any faster, but it allows multiple machines to be able to read and write to the NAS at faster speeds which in the real world can be a huge performance boost. If you have Plex running the performance can take a big hit with a single Ethernet connection and multiple devices watching movies and uploading/downloading files, but with 4 bonded ports the performance hit is noticeably less.

If your going to run Virtual Machines more RAM is always better and 32 GB is overkill for most home uses, but why not?

Having read and write caches can really boost the performance of a NAS, I saw that with the Drobo so I made sure to put them in my Synology. The only concern is the longevity of the cache drives, they have a limited lifespan with the number of writes, so in a high-use environment you may be better off without a write cache.

I want the flexibility to run a Windows Virtual Machine to reduce the number of physical machines I have in my office, but I am still reluctant to use a NAS for it. I am pretty old-school in the way I think about computers, I prefer my NAS just be Network Attached Storage and not a jack-of-all-trades with a lot of software running on it that could cause a problem later on, so I have yet to set any VMs up. But I might. One day. Maybe.

I am running Plex and it is working great, even better than when I had it running on an iMac. We have 3 TVs in the house and are regularly streaming from Plex to 2 of them at once with no problems.

I am also running Synology’s Photos app, it is kind of terrible, so I may remove it at some point.

It is not a quiet machine, especially once there are 6 Seagate IronWolf Pro hard drives in it. The machine sits in the corner of my office surrounded by sound proofing squares and I can still hear it whirring and clicking all day long. Its not really loud, but loud enough to be distracting.

Overall I am very happy with the Synology DS1621+ and after 3 months of using it I recommend you consider it as an alternative to a Drobo, QNAP, or building your own NAS.

P.S. A NAS is not a backup solution unless you have 2 of them backing up to each other. One is none, two is one, and three is adequate. You should always have at least 3 findable and proven good copies of any important data. At least one of them should be off-site at a location other than your home or business.

Computers

How to Take Smart Notes by Sönke Ahrens

Published December 17, 2021 by Dave Nelson

How to Take Smart Notes by Sönke Ahrens

I am getting organized, like in-general organized. I am creating to-do lists, setting goals, and closely tracking my progress. I am learning some new tools and working on building new habits and I am hoping that they will help facilitate some changes for the better.

I am starting with collecting all of the notes that I have scattered across many different hard drives and the Internet, so I thought learning how to take better notes would be a good idea.

I learned about the Hoe to Take Smart Notes book while learning how to use a note taking tool called Obsidian, many of the blog posts and videos I watched referred to it and made it sound like a great book.

I bought it from Amazon to read on the Kindle and read it in a day.

The title is “How to Take Smart Notes,” but I think it would have been better served with the title, “Why Take Smart Notes and How to Use Them.” Although it does cover the “How” of smart note taking, the majority of its pages are about the “Why.”

I found the why of it interesting, but very dry.

The references throughout the book may be the best thing about it, I highlighted and saved many quotes and references for future exploring, the bibliography is a great resource.

I plan on using what I learned and applying it to my daily note taking, task management, and other writing projects.

Form the author’s website:

This is the step-by-step guide on how to set up and understand the principle behind the note-taking system that enabled Luhmann to become one of the most productive and systematic scholars of all time. But most importantly, it enabled him to do it with ease. He famously said: “I never force myself to do anything I don’t feel like.” Luhmann’s system is often misunderstood and rarely well explained (especially in English). This book aims to make this powerful tool accessible to everyone with an interest in reading, thinking and writing. It is especially helpful for students and academics of the social sciences and humanities and nonfiction writers.

I rate How to Take Smart Notes a 6 out of 10 and recommend it to anyone looking to build a solid system of note taking, but be ready for the book to be a slog.

BooksNon-Fiction

Dice Throne

Published December 13, 2021 by Dave Nelson

I discovered Dice Throne through their Marvel Kickstarter and after backing it decided to get the other Dice Throne games to go along with it.

The big pitch for Dice Throne and the mechanic that makes it a bit different from other games is that there are characters to play that are very simple and ones that are very complex with a nice mixture in between. Between Season One and Season Two there are 16 characters to choose from with a complexity rating between 1 and 6. But don’t be fooled, complexity does not translate to simple and hard to play, with some combinations of characters the simple characters are a lot harder to play well and win with than the more complex characters.

Most importantly, the gameplay is very well balanced as long as the players are equally good/bad at playing the game. Since it is a dice game with the Yahtzee mechanic of being able to re-roll your dice up to 3 times (unless something changes that) there is also a good amount of luck involved.

A 2 player game can take anywhere between 30 minutes to 2 hours depending upon the how fast the players make choices. Sadly, the base game does not include a solo game… but I got around that by playing a 2-handed solo game, which doesn’t work great, but it let me get an idea of what playing 2 of the characters is like.

Enter Dice Throne Adventures, it is a totally different game that allows for a solo or multi-player game where the Dice Thrown characters are used to battle bad guys, monsters, and bosses… but it is on back order and I have no idea when it will be delivered.

We’ve played a couple of games so far and I am really enjoying it and I am looking forward to playing all 16 of the characters.

I rate Season 1 and Season 2 of Dice Throne an 8 out of 10 and recommend it to anyone with access to at least one other person to play it with.

GamesHappy