It’s the FIELD DAY !

• Author: DigitalMind
• Filed under: Ham Radio
• Date: Jun 28,2008

Ham Radio organisations world wide hold a contest every year called a field day.  Essentially it’s a contest of which club can get the most contacts in a 24 hour period, using only TEMPORARY INSTALLATIONS.  In the case of my ham radio club, this means we will be setting up in a Park in St-Eustache and using electricity from generators.  All the antenna’s and stations will be put up about an hour before the contest starts.   Then the stations will be manned at all times for 24 hours.  (I guess I will get a few hours sleep in my car!)

I will post pictures after !

If anyone wants to come, it’s from Saturday 10am until Sunday at 10am.

Here’s the link to the map of where we’ll be!

EDIT : It turns out the field day is only at the same time in the Canada and the US.  Also, my ham radio club has changed in the sense that it only had 1 station, and we were setup inside the chalet of a park where we had access to electricity.  It’s legal in the contest, it just means we get less points per contact. A video slideshow will be put online in the days that follow.

Online file backup service – free 45 day Trial – No Credit Card

• Author: DigitalMind
• Filed under: Uncategorized
• Date: Jun 26,2008

Sugarsync is a service for backing up your data online and sharing the same data with multiple computers.  Basically, the first 45 days are free and doesn’t even require a credit card to sign up and test.  They give you 10 gigs of storage space to upload you data and download it again when needed.

Everything you want to sync goes up to a server in the sky, and when another computer you’re keeping in sync comes online, it connects to the server to get and send the latest file updates.

Once your free trial is over, the price for a 10 gig online storage “bin” is a very fair $25 per year.  However you only need to think about that once you’ve tried it for free !

The lie about “saving the planet”

• Author: DigitalMind
• Filed under: Solar Power and Off-Grid Living
• Date: Jun 25,2008

Somehow my Solar Investigation has led me to want to be more self sufficient and to help the planet by not destroying all of it’s resources.   Using less fossil fuels, polluting less, being “green” in general are all things i’ve been slowly adopting.  I recently watched a documentary from BBC called “The Power of the Planet” which was all about the evolution of earth and how we came to be here.

Although it was not the point of this documentary, I came to a very unexpected conclusion by watching this.  The planet is not in danger, we are not killing it at all.  If anything, we’re artificially creating things that the earth has been dealing with since the beginning of time.  It’s not the planet that is in danger, it’s the human race.

Yes we’re depleting earth’s Oil resources, yes we’re spewing tons of toxic chemicals into the atmosphere, and yes the earth is warming up.

However these are all parts of the natural process of earth.  The earth will make more oil,  the toxic chemicals that we’re putting in the air is what originally CREATED our atmosphere (Volcanoes throwing tons of Co2 and other substances into the air for millions of years), and the earth has always changed from between an ice age and the planet we know now.  Technically, we’ve just finished an ice age.  It’s no wonder the whole planet it warming up.

In conclusion,  lets not be high and mighty and pretend we’re trying to “Save the Planet”.  Lets face it, it’s man kind we want to save.  There’s very little us humans can do to REALLY hurt the planet. Anything we do the earth can fix it a couple million years.  To us that’s forever, for the earth a million years is nothing.  All we’re doing is hurting ourselves and destroying the things that WE NEED to continue existing on earth. Don’t save the planet, SAVE US !

Bye bye Windows, HELLO LINUX !

• Author: DigitalMind
• Filed under: Uncategorized
• Date: Jun 24,2008

I’m almost ashamed to admit that all my computers are running WindowsXP.  Not because i’m pro-microsoft, but because it’s the most common OS and I know how to use it very well. Because of my job it’s important that I know the softwares that are most commonly used.   I’ve been wanting to learn linux and switch to that, but was too afraid of the down-time while I switch everything over and basically have to re-learn all my computer stuff.

Last Friday I decided to use a spare p3 866mhz with 360mb Ram to test out Ubuntu.   Ubuntu has a very nice graphical point and click interface that’s similar to XP and MacOS.

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DIY Solar Hot Water heater attempt #1

• Author: DigitalMind
• Filed under: Solar Power and Off-Grid Living
• Date: Jun 17,2008

Now that my sister has a little bit of Solar Power in her off-grid house, my next mission is to get them water.

A couple of summers ago they got a rain water collector that catches the rain that comes off the roof, but it froze and cracked in the winter because it wasn’t drained.

I figure that if I put the water collector UNDERGROUND, below the frost line, it will not freeze. Once there’s some sort of underground tank, with a pump that will bring up the water when they turn on the faucet, I have a working source of water. I would like to heat this water.

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Possible NEW Canadian Copyright laws

• Author: DigitalMind
• Filed under: Uncategorized
• Date: Jun 12,2008

CBC news has just posted an article about a new bill that has been proposed in Canadian Parliament in regards to Copyright Laws and regulations.

Some interesting sections :

The federal government has introduced a controversial bill it says balances the rights of copyright holders and consumers — but it opens millions of Canadians to huge lawsuits, prompting critics to warn it will create a “police state.”

I’m not surprised. Canadian Laws have been very vague as far as copyright infringment. This was bound to happen.

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Techie NATION birthday Paraphernalia

• Author: DigitalMind
• Filed under: Uncategorized
• Date: Jun 11,2008

My lovely girlfriend Marina had a hat made with the Techie NATION logo and slogan “If all the worlds a stage, then the TECHIE must be god”. I’m very, VERY happy with this. Considering I spend hours and hours every week working on this blog, it’s a perfect gift for me.

Is anyone else interested in owning a TechieNATION hat ? (Girlfriend not included)

Thanks for visiting TechieNATION !

Cool toys for the outdoor Techie

• Author: DigitalMind
• Filed under: Techie Toys'n'Games
• Date: Jun 11,2008

My Sister and her Hubby recently got me a really cool Monocular. This got me looking into other fun techie toys and I came across opticsplanet.net’s website.

OpticsPlanet is one of the leading optics suppliers with a wide selection of sport optics, tactical and military gear, microscopes, and even Prescription Sunglasses! They have a huge selection of binoculars, spotting scopes, night vision, telescopes, rangefinders, laser sights, flashlights, tripods, radar guns, digital camera binoculars and much more!

One of the things I find the most interesting is the DIGITAL BINOCULARS. Normally, when you go hiking, bird watching, geocaching, or camping, you might take a high end digital camera or expensive binoculars. Instead, take an inexpensive digital binoculars camera and capture the moment while you enjoy the beauty of nature. Integrated Digital Camera binoculars not only bring objects closer, binoculars digital camera let you take digital photo pictures, and, with many models, capture video, that you can share with friends, send to relatives, and keep a memory for years to come.

OpticsPlanet’s site is a great place for people to explore, learn about their hobbies and find the best gear to suit their needs.  The site has a Best Price Guarantee offers Free UPS Shipping on most orders over $29.95.  Check it out !

Camera found !

• Author: DigitalMind
• Filed under: Uncategorized
• Date: Jun 11,2008

Ok so I found my camera.  Expect posts about my cool bday present coming up :  Techie Toys, Green Clothing, TechieNATION paraphernalia and Ham Radio Jackets !

Birthday Weekend

• Author: DigitalMind
• Filed under: Uncategorized
• Date: Jun 9,2008

I had a great birthday weekend that just ended.  Unfortunately, I couldn’t find my Camera the entire time.

On Friday some friends and I went to a beautiful spot by the water.  We were surrounded by the st-laurence on 3 sides of where we were.  We made a fire, we fished, we drank, made hotdogs on the fire, and we had a good time !  Thanks to everyone that came !

On Saturday my girlfriend and I drove down to blainville to visit my mum, along with my sister and her hubby who happened to be in town for the weekend.  We had an amazing LOBSTER dinner at a local bar (It’s the Lobster Festival right now) and afterwards setup camp in my mothers backyard.  (We could have slept indoors, but we love our tent, (that we call the TARDIS).   We once again made a nice big fire in my mothers outdoor backyard fire pit.  I really wish I had my camera.

My mum gave me a REALLY good quality jacket with my Ham Radio Call-Sign on the front and back.  I was also given some environmentally friendly socks !!

My sister and her hubby got me a really high end flashlight that straps to your head.  I’ve used these before, but none like this.  It has a brightness setting, and when on maximum, you’d think it’s a car headlight !   To top it all off, it’s lightweight and comes with a carry case that fits on my tool belt.   It will be very handy for all those times I need light but need both my hands to work with.   I was in the process of training a monkey to do this for me, but now I’ll let him go free since he’s no longer needed.

They also got me a Monocular.  You know, those cool one eye’d magnification devices that all the spies use in the movies ! This will be handy for geocaching, bird watching, and maybe sometimes even save me from needing to go get a tall ladder to check something in a cable that’s along the top of a warehouse !

I will be writing more in detail about these things soon.  I need to find my camera first.

Stay Tuned !