Blogs

I found myself floundering a bit after passing the General exam. I had been in “study” mode for a few weeks and not having anything to study left me feeling… odder than usual. So I decided to start studying for the Amateur Extra exam, why not? So far I have read the ARRL Extra Class License Manual cover to cover. I found it much harder to read than the Technician or General manuals, not because the content is more complicated or detailed, but because the writing and editing are not up to the same quality as those other manuals. There are many errors and many passages that are written in ways that confused me. ...

As I said in a previous post, I got my Technician License to fly drones (quadcopters) and didn’t really learn much in the process, I just memorized the answers. But once I decided to get a General License I decided I really wanted to learn something. I started with the ARRL General Class License Manual and read it cover-to-cover. While doing that I attended the QSO Today Virtual Ham Expo where I met Michael Burnette, AF7KB in a chat room who wrote The Fastrack to Your General Class Ham Radio License and he recommended his book to me which I immediately bought on Audible! ...

In 2015 I earned my technician ham radio license so that I could legally fly my drones via a First-Person View (FPV) camera that used the ham radio bands to transmit. I bought a study aid for my iPhone and spent a week or two doing practice tests until I was passing them pretty easy. I didn’t read any books, go to a class, or even talk to anyone else about it at the time. ...

I have recently gotten deep into card games, not collectable card games like Magic the Gathering, although I have done that in the past, but games like Legendary and Munchkin, and Dresden Files where there are a lot of cards, a lot of shuffling, and generally the potential for rough handling. With my Legendary game there are a handful of cards that get used at the beginning of every game, so they see a lot more use than any other cards in the game. After just 5 solo games I could already see those cards taking a beating and showing signs of wear. A big part of the fun of these card games is not knowing what card is coming up next, so having cards that stand out is not a good thing. ...

I have really gotten into Upper Deck’s Legendary Marvel card game, as previous posts have shown, and a big part of that are the challenges provided by Legendary Leagues. Here is the description from their website: “The Legendary League Series are unofficial leagues for competitive solo play of Legendary: A Marvel Deck Building Game and Legendary: Villains. It was started on BoardGameGeek.com with the Marvel Legendary base set by Jesse Olivier in 2013, DarthEd has run the hero league since season 2, and Travelsized has run the leagues that feature the Villains sets as well as the Starter Leagues. In each league, individuals will be competing against each other in solo play in multiple scoring categories in order to see who is the most Legendary!” ...

Hobby Lobby Art Cases full of Legendary Marvel cards Storing around 5000 sleeved cards that you want to be able to easily get at and play with is a bigger problem than I thought it would be. I found some people using the medium size expansion boxes and some cutting and gluing to make some really cool cases, but I don’t want to cut up my boxes. I found a 3d-printed storage solution, but it added a lot of weight to the original box and didn’t come close to holding all of the cards. ...

Finished Planck KeyboardAfter building the macro pad I jumped right into building a Planck. The Planck is a 40% ortholinear keyboard and there are files available on Thingiverse to print your own case and plate to build one. I used a case from mesohuannny and a plate from furfoxsake. They were both easy to print, but I had to increase the height of the case a bit to accommodate my messy bundle of wires. ...

Handwired 2×5 Macro Pad with 3D-Printed caseWhile on lockdown for COVID-19 I decided it was the perfect time to build my first hand-wired mechanical keyboard and that starting small was the right way to begin. After much searching and thinking I chose a [2×5 case](https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2509293 noreferrer) that I found on ThingiVerse by [Jacob Jaeggli (jakebot)](https://www.thingiverse.com/jakebot/about noreferrer) and with [Kailh BOX Heavy Burnt Orange Switches](https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/3099/8088/files/BOX_Burnt_Orange.pdf?5816470357010718290 noreferrer) and a quick trip to Microcenter for a Teensy 2.0 Arduino board and diodes I got started. ...

This was my third or fourth listen to the Iron Druid Chronicles on Audible and my first time to listen to the entire series in one go. All 9 novels as I have not gotten the 10 short stories available but may get them at some point. In general, I do not recommend listening to so many books in a series one-after-another, it can lead to burnout and reduce the enjoyment from a series of stories. But I really enjoyed this listen all the way to the new book Scourged. ...

Legendary Marvel Boxes Legendary is a card game from Upper Deck that came out in 2015. I first got the Dresden Files Cooperative Card Game (not a Legendary game), then Legendary Encounters Firefly game which I liked a lot, Legendary Big Trouble in Little China, then the Legendary Buffy the Vampire Slayer game. I am primarily a solo player of these games, but the first time I played the Buffy game was with my wife and some friends in a 4-player game. It took us a bit to understand the instructions, but it wasn’t too hard. That convinced me that I really wanted the original Legendary game, the Marvel version of the game. ...