AmateurRadio.com

Welcome to another installment of Linux in the Ham Shack. In this episode, our mostly unprepared hosts discuss a couple of interesting topics. Yes, really, they are interesting. In the Ham Geeky™ section, Richard plows the fertile fields of contest loggers for Linux, as well as cross-platform solutions, including running your own favorites under WINE. In our Linux Geeky™ area, Russ discusses the VLC media player among other things you’ll just have to listen to find out about. Several pieces of feedback are discussed and there is the usual assortment of witty banter, mindless rambling and quasi drunkenness. No, that’s not right–I meant quasi drunkenness. So sit back, strap in, and enjoy the ride.

73 de The LHS Guys

Introduction:

• Welcome back to another episode of LHS.

Topics:

• Texoma Hamarama
  Richard attended Texoma Hamarama at the Ardmore Convention Center in Ardmore, OK. He had a great time and describes his adventures. He took a few pictures and wrote a blog entry for the web site.
• HamQTH
  HamQTH is a callsign lookup service that is free and does not require a subscription. Russ gives his review. By registering, you can edit some of your information or use the search results in your logging program. Thanks to Ted, WA0EIR, for telling us about it.
• Adventures in Printing
  • Richard recently installed Linux Mint on his wife’s machine as she was becoming increasingly frustrated with the speed of Windows. He did run into an issue with getting her Lexmark all-in-one printer working, which leads him to a discussion of printing in Linux.
  • CUPS, Common Unix Printing System, originally developed by Apple for OS X, has become the standard printing system for Linux. You can administer CUPS by pointing your web browser to http://localhost:631
  • Most distributions install the Foomatic driver database. Another source of drivers is Gutenprint.
  • If your printer is not listed specifically, you may have success using a generic PCL5, PCL6 or Postscript driver.
  • Also check the Linux Foundation OpenPrinting project to see how well a given printer is supported in Linux. It’s a good idea to visit this site before you buy the printer.
  • Most network printers will be recognized and configured automatically by CUPS.

Contact Info:

• Contact Richard at [email protected], Russ at [email protected], or both at the same time at [email protected].
• Listen to the live stream every other Tuesday at 8:00pm Central time. Check the LHS web site for dates.
• Leave us a voice mail at 1-909-LHS-SHOW (1-909-547-7469), or record an introduction to the podcast.
• Sign up for the LHS mailing list.
• Sign up for the MAGNetcon mailing list.
• LHS merchandise is available at the Merch link on Web site. Check out the Badgerwear or buy one of the other LHS-branded items at PrintFection.com/lhs or Cafe Press. Thanks!
• Thanks to Dave from Gamma Leonis for the theme music.

Music:

• To be added.

In this episode of Linux in the Ham Shack, our heroes manage to stay more or less on topic, which means there might be some actual content for the listeners. Hooray for small miracles. In segment one, Richard discusses his adventure at the Texoma Hamarama in Ardmore, Oklahoma. In segment two, the boys get all Ham Geeky™ about hamqth.com and all the neat things one can do with it. In the third and final segment, the Linux Geeky™ topic is CUPS and how to making printing easier for those who wish to do it using Linux.

73 de The LHS Guys

Sorry for the recent Web site downtime. It was a stupid error on my (K5TUX’s) part. Also, it drives home the need for me to separate the production Web server from the development one. Hopefully that will be accomplished in the near future and downtime like was experienced over the last few days will not happen again. Thank you for hanging in there and welcome back to the site.

73 de K5TUX

Well let me see if I can come up with enough words to get all the pictures on this post.

Well October is here and along with the State Fair of Texas in Dallas it is also time for the Texhoma Hamarama in Ardmore Oklahoma. For many years a friend of mine and organizer of this event Henry Allen W5TYD has been trying to get me to make the track to Ardmore and check it out.

So I gathered myself up at 4:30 in the morning put a spark to the B.S.S. Improbable and made my way toward the Indian territories. I had really forgotten that the middle of the night was the only time that it is not a total pain to drive through Dallas. A little over two hours later I found myself in Ardmore. As described the hamfest was very easy to find. The shiny almost new convention center was right off I-35 at exit 33. I exited made a right turn then made another right turn and I was there ( I could never be a Nascar driver ).

The parking lot at the Ardmore Convention Center was more than ample and I was able to find a parking space very close to the front door. Not like Ham Com here locally where you have to park on the other side of town and ride a shuttle bus. Due to a mistake on the website I found myself there an hour before they opened the doors. So I spent some time talking to other Hams that had made the same mistake.

After paying a very resonable $8.00 to get in I roamed around looking at all the wonderful items to be had. At the end of the first row I went down I ran into Jimmy (Pinky) Pinston N5WYT from the Texas Baptist Men who was debating on buying some hardline for the freshly installed commercial repeater at the Baptist Mens building in Dallas. We talked about a few things like ARES in Van Zandt county where he lives and the fact that his license expired at midnight that night. Shame on you Pinky.

Went and sat in on the OK section ARES presentation. Then went and sat in on Andy WY5V’s amateur radio in the park presentation. Andy is king of amateur radio these days. King of ARES in Dallas. Big Chief at the VHF-FM society everything. Spent some time visiting with folks that I have known for years David Kaun N5DBK, Tim KD6FWD, and my little buddy Paul KD5TKO.

I really didn’t come home with anything except some good memories but we had a great time in Ardmore and I expect to go back many times in the future. Russ was not in attendance but you all know how he is.

73 everybody

Introduction:

• Who has a drawl?

Announcements:

• Richard has been reading about Ubuntu 11.10, “Oneiric Ocelot”, due to be released on October 13th. Our hosts hope to have some sort of review in the near future. Richard is also considering trying KDE. (The version of Ubuntu with KDE as default is Kubuntu.)
• Look for another episode of Richard’s Radio Adventures in the near future. It’s recorded mobile, and Richard wonders how to reduce the road noise with Audacity. Russ offers some advice on training the noise removal plug-in for Audacity.
• Richard did not make it to the Belton hamfest this year, but maybe next spring. He’s looking forward to attending the Texoma Hamarama, October 21 – 22, 2011 at the Ardmore Convention Center, 2401 North Rockford Road, Ardmore, OK.
• Richard is recruiting hams for the Kaufman County (TX) ARES group. Please visit the KCARES website for more information.
• Richard re-tells the infamous badger story. Speaking of badgers, you can find the Kiss My Badger tee-shirt, and a lot of other good stuff, at the LHS store.

Feedback:

• Danny inquires about an easy-to-use distribution for a senior and computer novice, perhaps Linux Mint. Our hosts suggest Linux Mint and PCLinuxOS. Note that the Mint live CD does not include the codecs, but the DVD does. If you install from the CD, you can install the codecs later.
• Danny also asks if there is a way to ask the Mumble developers to support screen-reading software. Since Mumble isn’t a GTK-based application, it’s probably not well supported under Orca. You may wish to raise your concerns on the Mumble forum, or on IRC at irc.freenode.net, #mumble, or click the Live Chat Now button on the www.mumble.com website.
• Burt, K1OIK, left a comment regarding Episode 61 entitled “South of the Border”: “I’d like to go south of your borders!” We’re a little worried about you, Burt.
• Michael, KD8GIJ, asks for instructions on removing a dual-boot installation of Linux Mint if he decides he doesn’t like it. You can, of course, just wipe the whole drive and reinstall Windows. You may be able to boot the Windows install media and let it “repair” your installation. However, you don’t really need to remove grub; just make Windows the default and remove Linux from the grub menu. If that’s not acceptable, you’ll likely have to wipe and reinstall Windows to return it to the pre-Linux state.Other suggestions include:
  • install Mint as a virtual machine with Virtual Box.
  • use the Windows Ubuntu Installer (wubi) which will also allow you to uninstall Linux after testing.
  • install Linux to a flash drive and boot and run from that to try it out
  • make an image of the Windows drive before installing Linux, perhaps with PartImage or Clonezilla, and you’ll have an easy means of returning to the pre-Linux-install state.
• John “The Nice Guy” Spriggs, G7VRI, asks about a live Linux distribution reviewed in Episode 62 that contained software to run EchoLink. (I think he’s referring to Andy’s Ham Radio Linux CD). svxlink is the Linux-native EchoLink client, but it is CLI-driven. The Windows client does run well under Wine. You may want to look at qtel, another Echolink client. It’s an older application. In fact, svxlink is based on Qtel.
• John also wonders if the music played on the show is Creative Commons licensed. While most of the music is Creative Commons or podsafe, the music in Episode 62 is not CC or podsafe, but Russ did have permission from the artists to play them.
• John pointed out that the description tags in the podcast audio files were empty. Thanks, John, and rest assured that Russ will be adding descriptions as time permits.
• By the way John, please contact Richard at the email address below as you may be able to help him with some music for another project.

Contact Info:

• Contact Richard at [email protected], Russ at [email protected], or both at the same time at [email protected].
• Listen to the live stream every other Tuesday at 8:00pm Central time. Check the LHS web site for dates.
• Leave us a voice mail at 1-909-LHS-SHOW (1-909-547-7469), or record an introduction to the podcast.
• Sign up for the LHS mailing list.
• Sign up for the MAGNetcon mailing list.
• LHS merchandise is available at the Merch link on Web site. Check out the Badgerwear or buy one of the other LHS-branded items at PrintFection.com/lhs or Cafe Press. Thanks!
• Thanks to Dave from Gamma Leonis for the theme music.

Music:

• “Out of Sight” by White Light Riot from the album “Atomism,” courtesy of Jamendo.
• “Saving Lucidity” by The Way I Am, courtesy of Jamendo.

Introduction:

• It’s a ramblin’ show tonight.

Announcements:

• Texoma Hamarama 2011 will be October 21-22, 2011 at the Ardmore Convention Center, 2401 North Rockford Road, Ardmore, OK. Richard hopes to be there.
• If you attended the Huntsville, AL hamfest in August, let us know if you think it would be a good venue for LHS.
• Thanks, as always, to Gamma Leonis for the theme music.

Topics:

• Russ talks about the antenna feedline window passthrough panel he bought at Dayton. He’s also hoping to get a radio in his truck. Richard describes the window passthrough methods he’s used in the past, with foam pipe insulation or air conditioning insulation foam.
• Richard talks about the lack of ham radio activity in his area (Kaufman County, TX): no club, no RACES group, no ARES, etc. He called his ARRL SEC (Section Emergency Coordinator), Walt, KG5SOO, and learned that the local groups weren’t happy with the current ARES manager. The SEC says paperwork is being processed and the new emergency coordinator of Kaufman County, TX is Richard, KB5JBV! Currently, there are just two ARES members, Richard and the Emergency Manager, so if you’re in Kaufman County, TX, get in touch with Richard! (Congratulations, Richard!)
• There’s a new podcast out there: Richard’s Radio Adventures. Look for it on the Resonant Frequency feed.
• In Linux-related news, Russ lets us know that kernel.org was hacked a few weeks ago. Because the code was in an encrypted git repository, it was safe, but they moved it to github, anyway.
• Russ also says there was a brief period that GNU Emacs was packaged and distributed with a binary blob in it, which violates the GPL. It’s since been fixed.
• A security hole in SSL/TLS has been reported.
• Simon, HB9DRV, has sold the rights to his Ham Radio Deluxe software. Our hosts discuss the possible ramifications.
• Richard wanders into a discussion of Arch Linux. It seems there was an issue with Arch not being free (as in speech). However, Parabola GNU/Linux is Arch, but free of all the entanglements.
• If anyone out there is an Emergency Coordinator or Assistant Emergency Coordinator, send an email to Richard about how your EC is going. Richard is looking for advice on how to best set up the ARES EC organization in his county.
• Russ admits that his other podcast, QSK Netcast, has stalled, mostly due to a lack of his available time.
• Since some parts of the LHS website are now subscription only, Russ began researching SSL certificates. He found a couple of places that issue inexpensive or free browser-compatible certificates: CheapSSLs , under $10 per year, and StartSSL will issue personal certificates for free.
• Russ and Richard discuss their love for the Sansa Clips. Russ likes DoggCatcher for listening to podcasts on his Android phone.
• Richard talks about his secret antenna project. He’s now in an area with Codes, Covenents and Restrictions (CCRs) which preclude outside antennas. Years ago, he bought an Arrow dual-band J-pole antenna, and used it for packet and other stuff. Using some military surplus olive-drab fiberglass tent poles, he strapped the J-pole to the top of the tent poles and the poles to the top of an 8′ fence. He assures the neighbors that it’s just a flower pot hanger.

Contact Info:

• Contact Richard at [email protected], Russ at [email protected], or both at the same time at [email protected].
• Listen to the live stream every other Tuesday at 8:00pm Central time. Check the LHS web site for dates.
• Leave us a voice mail at 1-909-LHS-SHOW (1-909-547-7469), or record an introduction to the podcast.
• Sign up for the LHS mailing list.
• Sign up for the MAGNetcon mailing list.
• LHS merchandise is available at the Merch link on Web site. Check out the Badgerwear or buy one of the other LHS-branded items at PrintFection.com/lhs or Cafe Press. Thanks!
• Thanks to Dave from Gamma Leonis for the theme music.