Scott VE3QBZ

FN03ef, situated upon the traditional territories of the Erie, Neutral, Huron-Wendat, Haudenosaunee and Mississaugas

Interested in CW, Hellschreiber, RTTY, PSK-31, APRS, and Packet

Naval Communicator, Royal Canadian Naval Reserve

Chips: Ketchup

Public Key

npub1zc42kpgy58er7wxplu9yj9knet4n04626a0dfct6gfp22j0l8mksjwn8qu

NIP-05 Address

ve3qbz_at_mastodon.radio@momostr.pink

Profile Code

nprofile1qqspv24tq5z2ru3l8rql7zjfzmfu46eh6a9dwhk5u9ayys49f8lnamgpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0ds689gz4

Publishing to

relay.damus.io

nos.lol

Author Public Key

npub1zc42kpgy58er7wxplu9yj9knet4n04626a0dfct6gfp22j0l8mksjwn8qu

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Last Notes

2025-05-02 20:54:00 UTC

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Thanks! So same as I am used to, I can live with that :) Or come bug you on how to patch (or research it, now that I know)

2025-05-02 20:51:01 UTC

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mmmm... what the the defaults (roughly?)

2025-05-02 20:48:00 UTC

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Were any of those tweaks env vars or parameters at deploy time, or can they be adjusted via the admin interface once the instance is up and running?
I am trying hard to get a sane, liveable deployment working before I do anything serious with it.

2025-05-02 20:21:14 UTC

Experimenting with deploying my own Mastodon instance. It's not..terrible? Need to get a SMTP service set up though before I consider doing anything "production" with it.
If anyone has any tips/suggestions for things to think about up front that are hard to fix later, I'm all ears. Using helm and the chart provided by Mastodon. So far the only thing I tweaked was setting up ElasticSearch as a single node / all-role master, since I only have one k8s node.

2025-04-29 18:22:38 UTC

The weather feels very unstable. We could get nothing, or everything.

2025-04-24 17:31:57 UTC

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haha, i dunno what happened to the thread with @npub1yqw…ywz8 , but I am glad you are also aiming for this interaction 🤠
When I pasted it from my text editor, i must have nuked their @ name at the beginning of the post

2025-04-24 16:43:11 UTC

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Which looks more and more like gopher haha now that we discuss it, but I remember gopher has some pretty odd markup, so on the backend not quite the same thing. But same idea for sure.
It's been a long time since I've played with Gopher.
I also confess I haven't tried kiki yet (I will now!) That will help inform my replies.

2025-04-24 16:40:17 UTC

you are aiming for this interaction:
packet node> kiki
Connecting...
1. Weather
2. News
3. Vegetable of the day
> 1
It is currently 16 degrees and sunny
1. yesterday's high temp
2. back to main menu
> 2
1. Weather
2. News
3. Vegetable of the day
>

2025-04-24 16:36:33 UTC

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The packet node can actually be thought of as a network switch, because that's what it does - in addition to handling the I/O from the user and the script in this case, it will also fill AX.25 packets to their configured MTU size, ensure they get delivered, etc, just like a real switch. So that's all invisible to you as a layer7 app doing simple text I/O; you just write to the console, and the node handles the rest (via a socket, obviously, but even that is handled via systemd upstream of you)

2025-04-24 16:31:43 UTC

Maybe this will give you an idea of what we need - it's the wall command on my node (Daria's code, not mine, but I run it).
Now obviously, it handles the user input as well as the data, but it gives you an idea of how simple this can/needs to be:
https://github.com/juniberry/NodeWall/blob/main/wall.py
What happens is you connect to my node, and issue the wall command, and my node telnets to localhost invoking this script via a systemd socket daemon, and just passes the I/O back and forth to the node's AX.25 stack.

2025-04-24 16:12:53 UTC

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even crazier, that text client hosted on packet could be used to reach other Internet based kiki instances, not just my local one - it's a hosted client for accessing kiki's via packet

2025-04-24 16:11:02 UTC

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if you wrote a line oriented console app that talked to a kiki back end, I'd host it on packet - the cool part is you can do all the dev without the packet stack, if it's just spitting line oriented text out and then waiting for input, I can plug it right into the packet node

2025-04-24 14:57:48 UTC

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Roger that - I will put together a couple demos for you! Ideally, one on HF (300 baud) and one on VHF (1200 baud) so you can see how it drives.

2025-04-24 14:43:29 UTC

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I should do a vid capture of me jumping to a remote node over HF, and back to me, and then using my "wall" application on my node to view and add a comment on the wall, or check my mail - would give you a strong sense of what the experience is.
Or if you were interested, I could even open up telnet to an IP of your choosing, and you could hop on my node to try for yourself some time.

2025-04-24 14:40:30 UTC

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Hosting a line oriented application on a node that has packet networking is way better, imo, that proliferating the space with applications that talk AX.25 - that's messy, and a lot more work, and a lot less accessible to people that do packet, for example, via a VT100 and a packet modem (yeah, they are out there, and they are awesome! look up W1TM on qrz.com to see what his setup looks like - he uses a VT100 emulator on a dongle plugged into a monitor, and serial to a modem to do ax.25)

2025-04-24 14:38:21 UTC

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bear in mind though, the distinction between writing a packet networking client (eg. a packet browser for your server-side stack) vs writing and hosting a line oriented text mode client (that I can host on a packet node, where all the network underpinnings are handled by the node for me)

2025-04-24 14:37:16 UTC

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Typical HF packet (long range frequencies) size is 60 bytes, typical VHF (line of sight range frequencies) is quite a bit bigger - up to 230 bytes give or take. Retry is all handled at the AX.25 protocol layer - you can really think of AX.25 as the TCP/IP stand-in; it will get you your packets, in the correct order, with retries, from point A to point B all by itself.

2025-04-24 14:26:18 UTC

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Yep, gopher is a great example of what you would want.

2025-04-24 14:20:03 UTC

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Yeah, TUI or even VT100 is right out. If we had full asynchronous serial comms, it would be doable, but the turn around time on our packets is like..seconds. And airtime is a shared medium, so the more packets you create, the more chance of collisions.

2025-04-24 14:13:47 UTC

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What this means is that any interface to a user facing application needs to be entirely line oriented. Think edlin.com, not edit.exe (or ed, not vi, depending how want to roll, but any mention of edlin is a opportunity i take)

2025-04-24 14:12:16 UTC

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Oh that would be very cool.
From a packet radio perspective, in today's world, we can easily bring text from a telnet or ssh session to the radio layer on Linux, that's really easy. The challenge is that _terminal_ control is not there, in our software stacks or in practicality - it's too slow in asynchronous serial comms

2025-04-24 13:56:46 UTC

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Thank you for asking! It's funny, because I have been following your work on this (loooove the shareware model, btw!) and the newgroup styled work you've been doing (name escapes me now).
I will continue to reply here as thoughts occur to me

2025-04-06 15:00:52 UTC

Nearly went all in and wiped my system to run FreeBSD. One of these days it's going to win and get me, at this rate.
#FreeBSD

2025-03-20 17:38:01 UTC

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Were you in Edm back then? What was your big local ISP?

2025-03-20 17:36:05 UTC

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I might have misremembered - I was looking at cadvisionlegacy.com and it was a CDROM :)
Wild how many customers they had heading into the 2000's, quite a large outfit by the time they were purchased.

2025-03-20 17:27:10 UTC

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I can remember arriving in Calgary post-University for full time work and going down to the CADVision office downtown to sign up for internet access and to get the software stack needed to get internet - I don't remember if it came on CD or floppy at that point; I feel like it was probably just enough to get connected to CADVision, at which point it pulled down a browser and whatnot from their setup utility.
A different era to be sure.

2025-02-28 00:55:53 UTC

Another photo everyone has their own version of, but here is mine.
Quidi Vidi, St. John's #Newfoundland , as the blizzard rolls in. Honestly, the snow and wind just made it look better in my opinion.
https://mastodon.radio/system/media_attachments/files/114/078/780/079/918/872/original/8adf85ebb6dc63d2.jpg

2025-02-27 15:24:54 UTC

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I'd like to get back to experience that as well! I think there must be a period of time in the spring when people are emerging from winter, the boats are being prepped for the season, and energy levels are up that must be exciting.

2025-02-27 05:02:27 UTC

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It was tremendous. The place is unbelievable, it's like the foothills of the Alberta side Rockies crashed into an ocean. We were driving out to Bonavista, and the running joke in the car was "are we in Kananaskis yet?"

2025-02-27 01:34:43 UTC

I'm sure everyone has their own picture of The Battery neighbourhood in St. John's, but this one is mine
#Newfoundland
https://mastodon.radio/system/media_attachments/files/114/073/269/117/213/078/original/07301780c25e17b9.jpg

2025-02-18 02:46:54 UTC

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a great game, one of my favourites

2025-02-16 20:28:33 UTC

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From a couple hours ago. We've gotten another couple inches since, although it is finally starting to taper off.
https://mastodon.radio/system/media_attachments/files/114/015/442/690/076/128/original/26b0005e76763b4f.png

2025-02-16 16:35:36 UTC

My shovel your own snow farm is open for business despite the near blizzard conditions. Special today - shovel one bushel, get your second bushel FREE!

2025-02-16 03:39:27 UTC

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Patina aside, I do like the aesthetics, lots of buttons!

2025-02-16 03:38:18 UTC

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I don't know much about older iCOMs, is there anything special/great/whatever with that model? Or did you just appreciate the fine rust patina?

2025-02-16 03:35:29 UTC

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$200 list was uh..optimistic?

2025-02-16 01:32:30 UTC

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I KNOW :)

2025-02-16 01:28:34 UTC

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Oh weird. Here are the pics again!
I walk past this thing almost every day, walking the dog in the conservation area. It was love at first sight.
https://mastodon.radio/system/media_attachments/files/114/010/963/689/588/540/original/0ed7e2b17ad702cf.png
https://mastodon.radio/system/media_attachments/files/114/010/964/113/547/254/original/f0bf4b797fcac93f.png
https://mastodon.radio/system/media_attachments/files/114/010/965/983/800/425/original/be6887b31517232a.png
https://mastodon.radio/system/media_attachments/files/114/010/966/406/766/163/original/eddfa0bd2be84a63.png

2025-02-16 00:58:47 UTC

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This thing: https://mastodon.radio/@ve3qbz/113972015997632980

2025-02-15 23:25:29 UTC

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The thing is, not only is it the boat of my dreams, it's within walking distance. There's a gate at the end of my block that lets me get into the conservation area as a season pass holder.
https://mastodon.radio/system/media_attachments/files/114/010/477/564/801/976/original/2866dd9cfb9083cc.png

2025-02-15 23:20:10 UTC

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I wonder if the boat of my dreams is sitting there waiting for an auction - the marina/conservation area didn't do one this summer, so maybe they are batching them up (since they'd need to pay online auction house fees no doubt to list). The boat is outside the normal dry dock lot, which is fenced, they are tucked quite a ways away from the water at the end of what is essentially just a parking lot.

2025-02-01 21:48:08 UTC

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We're doing St. John's :) Like buffalo, into the wind. (secretly delighted it might be miserable weather haha)

2025-02-01 20:48:14 UTC

Wife and I just cancelled our February vacation together to Arizona. Our first trip without the kids in like a decade.
We'll travel domestically where we feel welcome. When the tariff announcement came down today, neither of us felt like we could go anymore. (actually, my wife sprang up from her chair and said "mobilize!", I was kinda delighted to be honest)
So....Tofino or St. John's?

2025-01-12 20:12:39 UTC

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That's pure ham radio territory lol

2025-01-12 20:07:52 UTC

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Bingo, if it can work with a simple NNTP client, that could be the way to connect it to packet :) Looking forward to learning more as you progress this.

2025-01-12 20:07:18 UTC

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Packet needs extreme economy of throughput - part of that is a CLI driven interface, it cannot be interactive at all, really, because comms are simplex. I can't even ask you to stop sending me text until you are..done sending me text
The other component of that economy is the ability to ask for the minimum amount of information I am interested in - asking a packet BBS to send you a list of all the bulletins it is holding is..very suboptimal. You always ask for something like "last 10"

2025-01-12 20:05:43 UTC

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You know what I was thinking :) Even without knowing/seeing more, the directory structure like ability to scope your view of conversations lends itself very well to a command line interface, which lends itself in turn very well to a packet radio BBS.

2025-01-12 20:03:33 UTC

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Bookmarking this, very interesting.

2025-01-05 03:07:14 UTC

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I pulled my NIC and used a browser that did not have any of the CloudLog content cached, and the only thing it stalls out on briefly (and unsurprisingly) is the openstreetmap tile data.
I can navigate around, create and edit QSOs, pull stats, look at my logbook, etc. just fine with no internet connection.

2025-01-05 02:07:25 UTC

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Which frameworks does Cloudlog use that cause that issue?

2024-12-25 17:03:25 UTC

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It's fun to see who shows up. I also have BirdNet-Go running here, listening for birds, so I get a nice dashboard and audio samples of everyone who visits.
https://mastodon.radio/system/media_attachments/files/113/714/538/502/021/678/original/1c72cf3e25964a31.png

2024-12-25 16:59:42 UTC

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Might as well give 'em what they like, too: https://www.audubon.org/news/who-likes-what-favorite-birdseed-feeder-regulars-and-rarities

2024-12-24 00:13:26 UTC

I reactivated my jazzradio.com account, which got me a 30 day free trial again. The subscription was going to be $120 CAD for 2 years when the trial ran out, which isn't awful. I was dithering over whether to do it or not, and decided to cancel the subscription.
And then it offered me a 58% price reduction to stay.
And I left anyways, because wtf, why not offer me that in the first place? Why be crappy like that?
Do I really have to create burner accounts to get your best pricing?

2024-11-14 20:41:49 UTC

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I'd always wished Ultima Online had expanded into the Worlds of Ultima. That would have been so cool.

2024-10-09 17:27:26 UTC

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I don't think the stock D75 antenna is any worse than any other stock HT antenna, but I agree with you completely - for packet operation, the performance goes way up with a longer antenna. It's quite a shocking difference.

2024-09-29 12:48:58 UTC

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Windy.com is a good one

2024-09-17 02:09:51 UTC

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I never had that one, I should look at OpenTT

2024-09-17 01:56:27 UTC

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Even Sid Meir's Railroads was bad by comparison.
None of them had that Microprose magic (because they weren't Microprose, as you noted)

2024-09-17 01:43:27 UTC

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I operated a thousand Toronto/Montreal/Buffalo railroads in my time :) I wish they'd done a purely Canadian map, that would have been so good.
Every successive RRT game was a pale imitation of the original, imo - I was gutted when 2 came out and didn't even have working signals, I couldn't believe it, and promptly went back to the original.

2024-09-16 20:51:21 UTC

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I have this box! Best game of my youth.

2024-09-08 15:32:19 UTC

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memory hungry though. I'm not sure if it knows when to stop eating RAM.
But overall pretty great, I agree

2024-09-07 03:08:54 UTC

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It's a very niche gaming genre :) I definitely remember Ford Simulator, and I think Jeep had one too, where you drove down a trail over logs and across streams and stuff - I remember playing it on PC in CGA. Like the Ford one, it was an official title from Jeep or AMC or Chrysler or whoever owned them during that period.

2024-08-18 14:33:20 UTC

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I was going to make the same comment! I really like how clean Windows 3.1 (and OS/2 1.3!) looked, I would lot mind going back to a similar widget set on Linux somehow.

2024-08-17 17:45:17 UTC

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if it's presently installed on my phone, will it get updates, or will it need a fresh install?

2024-08-11 02:38:35 UTC

Was kinda shocked to notice that sunset today was at 8:29pm. The days are definitely, noticeably shorter now.

2024-08-07 19:46:12 UTC

My first customer at the milkweed stand in the front yard
https://mastodon.radio/system/media_attachments/files/112/922/454/885/071/380/original/54b4bd80c7aab898.png

2024-08-05 01:53:12 UTC

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Some guy in a pickup truck stopped and threw twenty L into my tank "it's company gas, what do I care"...good old Alberta lol. Good times long time ago now.

2024-08-05 01:40:12 UTC

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I ran out of gas driving home from Dinosaur PP towards Calgary in my early days living out there - I knew how much range my car had, I did not factor in the headwind driving west :)

2024-08-05 01:36:57 UTC

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Yeah. No shade on free admission, that's a great thing they do, it's just crowded.
Have you been to Dinosaur Provincial Park? It's more badlands, a bit more subdued that Horse Thief Canyon, but also much emptier. A bit of a haul from Drumheller, though.

2024-08-05 01:12:51 UTC

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it's a glorious place when it's empty :)

2024-08-04 21:10:14 UTC

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I don't know if the Tyrrell still does free admission on Family Day (they did when Family Day was a fairly new holiday in Alberta), but the _best_ thing I ever did was take the kids to the Tyrrell for the day, the day BEFORE free admission.
We had the entire museum very nearly to ourselves, it was glorious, pin drop quiet, and unhurried. A very different experience of the fossils than a normal day.

2024-08-04 21:08:06 UTC

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That may be the street name, but it's a Richardson's Ground Squirrel, I am pretty sure.
Still a very good thing to keep in a pocket, no argument there.

2024-08-02 15:45:55 UTC

Why is #FreeBSD tempting me so

2024-07-09 20:37:10 UTC

N0FX is a valid US callsign, and I'm kinda jealous