I’ve been using del.icio.us to maintain a list of bookmarks for some time now. I read a bunch of different blogs and news sites that cover a lot of different topics, many of them at least somewhat related to amateur radio, emergency communications, and/or homeland security. One of the cool functions del.icio.us offers is an RSS feed containing any combination of the tags I’ve used to “mark” bookmarks as I save them to my list. You can now see the links I tag (and save to del.icio.us) as I browse, under the heading “Reading List” on the right side of the page. It’s not quite updated in real time, but usually within a few minutes of me adding a link.

I’m using the reading list a handy way of sharing things I’m reading that you might be interested in, without having to post an article that says nothing more than “hey- go read this about -whatever”. As you’re clicking past, I hope you find it useful.

If you haven’t used del.icio.us (or any other social bookmarking site; there are several that work pretty much the same way), here’s an introduction to how it all works.

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From The Capital Times, Madison WI:

A cut fiber optic line eliminated all Charter Communications services for thousands of customers in eastern Dane County Sunday night and early this morning.

The situation most notably affected fans of the Grammys telecast, but also cut off 911 calling ability for anyone with Charter phone service.

The outage began shortly after 6 p.m. Sunday, and repairs took until about 3:45 a.m. today, Charter spokesman Bob Pinter said.

From The Badger Herald, also in Madison, WI:

“The reason there’s an outage in [the Madison] area is because vandalism happened,” Guzman said. “Someone cut the fibers in [the Madison] area.”

Okay, this is bad… I use Charter’s cable modem service for internet access. If it’s that easy for someone (vandal, terrorist, etc) to cut a single cable and knock out half of Dane County, then I’m going to make sure my cable modem is not at all included in any of my emergency communications contingency planning.

(Okay, cable internet service wasn’t included anyway. But it’s an important wake up call, and a reminder that the commercial services we use daily can be very fragile. Just another reason to make sure my station equipment is in good shape)

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This isn’t amateur radio related, but interesting anyway:

Madison Interactive

A new group for people who work on public websites – both for work and for play – in the Madison area. Come hang out with us – you just might meet other people thinking about the same geeked-out things you’re thinking about.

Follow the link; the first event is February 15th at the High Noon Saloon. I won’t be there, unfortunately… I’m working overtime this week. If/when there is a second event, I’ll try to make that one.

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I work in a weather information vacuum.

In the office where I work, we’re restricted from accessing the internet from our workstations. We are not allowed to receive email from outside the company. We’re also restricted from having anything at our desks that “plugs in” that’s not work related. As far as I know, there is one NOAA weather radio in the building; and in 2 1/2 years, I’ve never heard a building-wide weather alert go out. (Although we do have a yearly tornado drill.) Generally, the best way to tell what the weather is doing is look out the window. Which is a valuable tool, but doing so tends to attract supervisors who want you to get back to work. So I need a way to keep an eye on what’s happening outside, but keep working in the meantime.

One way to do that is read the daily weather report before I head out for work. (Actually, I read the forecast the night before, too.) I have a bookmark set to the NWS local forecast for Madison, WI. That way, I have some idea what to expect. Some days I’m running late though, and I might forget to check the forecast. Or, what the forecast says at 0600 when I read it might no longer apply later in the day; I sometimes work from 0700 to 1600, and then work my part time job at night until 2230 or later.

What I really need is a way to go about my business, and worry about the weather only when necessary– without having to monitor NOAA weather radio unless something really is going on. (I can listen to weather radio on my HT, but that drains the battery which I might need later. Remember, no 12v power supply at my desk.)

In order to get around the “no email” restriction at work, I have an email address for my cellphone. (I can also send and receive SMS text messages on my phone.) So I can receive emailed weather alerts, but they’re usually loaded down with lots of text and advertising that are just too much for a phone. Fortunately, Channel3000.com has a service that sends the title of the weather alert, and the effective times to your cellphone’s email address. (Make sure you check the “Send alert to pager/phone” box.) I’ve been using the service for over a year, and it works very well.

However, my cellphone’s email address isn’t something I want to give out; once it’s out in the wild, it’s liable to end up on some spammer’s list of addresses. So I added a layer between my phone and Channel3000. I entered my Google Gmail address when I signed up for the weather alerts. Now the alert goes from Channel3000.com to Gmail, where I have a filter set up to autoforward the message to my cellphone. End result is I get notified whenever a severe weather statement, advisory, watch or warning is issued or updated. I don’t get the full text; just that a bulletin has been sent, which lets me know that I need to go find out what’s really happening (or is going to happen soon).

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As a technician class licensee who operates only on 2m (for now), I usually live in the world of line of sight communications. If I want to talk to another station, I have a finite number of choices. First, I can be close enough to that other station that the RF from my handheld gets there no matter what. Second, I can use a repeater, which extends my range. Third, I can try to gain altitude. Fourth is use more power. There are definite limits to what I can do with the resources I have, but I want to know what those limits are so that I know if I’m having any luck when I try to stretch them.

One measure I use is line of sight distance: how far away can my signal go? And how much of a difference does it make if I’m on this hill, or one floor up,or with this or that antenna? I need to plot distances on a map, but since I live in a city that is surrounded by lakes, the amount of water vs farmland between me and another station is important to me as well. I also need to do some calculating; I know there is always a scale on a map that tells me how many miles on the map equate to one inch. So I could get out a ruler, and count the number of inches, but I also have a computer to do that kind of work for me. Enter Google Maps, which will give you a very nice map of the area you’re working in, complete with satellite views. Google Maps is awesome for getting driving directions, but what it doesn’t do is let you plot distances between two points.

Now enter an application intended for runners called MapMyRun. This site lets you plot a run on a Google Map; you begin from a specific address, wherever else you click on the map, MapMyRun plots a straight line from the last point you clicked. If you’re setting up a run in the city, you click at each intersection or curve along your route. As you plot your run, the site keeps track of the distance you’re covering. Hmmm… you can instantly calculate the distance between two points on a map that’s superimposed on a satellite photo of the area you’re operating in.

I’ve found some interesting uses for this; first, I can specify where I’m operating from (the start of my “run”). Then, I can specify a point representing the station I’m talking to or trying to reach. That will tell me that I’m communicating with a station that’s x.xx miles away, line of sight. No calculations, no rulers, etc., and if I’m looking at the satellite view I can tell what kind of terrain is in the way. Second, I can quickly and easily find the distance from any location to a Skywarn reference point. Finally, I can store these plots on the site as saved runs, so I can compare them in case I turn up the power, move to a higher point, or try a new antenna.

There are probably more ways to use MapMyRun in a ham radio sense; if you come up with any, leave a comment and let me know.

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