Blogospheric Refraction

The life and times of Stuart Longland (VK4MSL)

Browsing Posts in Rants

Yes, Finally, thank-you Jeffrey for admitting this. If only you had realised this years ago, I might not be battling Microsoft SQL Server 2000 using RDP over a 31.2kbps PSTN modem link yesterday and this morning.  I might’ve instead been using a mysqldump-like tool over something akin to SSH, which would have been very welcome [...]

(I’m not one normally for airing dirty laundry in this manner, but I feel it is marginally better than airing it on the air.) Dear Mal, Please.  What is your problem? This evening, your behaviour on this band was absolutely appauling.  For someone who has apparently had a radio license for longer than I’ve been [...]

Well, after 9 years of solid service, the Nokia 3310 I’ve been using finally bit the dust this weekend.  And so now I’m getting my wish list together for what I’m looking for in a new device. One thing that gives me the irrits is companies trying to tell you the customer, what one wants. [...]

My Nokia 3310 died recently, and so I’ve been borrowing my father’s old ZTE T7 mobile phone.  This has had one useful side-effect in that I was able to back-up the contents of my SIM card, namely, the phonebook. JoinME for MacOS X is quite capable of loading the data from the phone and storing [...]

Well… has anyone noticed anything different about the ‘net? stuartl@atomos ~ $ host www.google.com.au www.google.com.au is an alias for www.google.com. www.google.com is an alias for www.l.google.com. www.l.google.com has address 74.125.237.52 www.l.google.com has address 74.125.237.48 www.l.google.com has address 74.125.237.49 www.l.google.com has address 74.125.237.50 www.l.google.com has address 74.125.237.51 www.l.google.com has IPv6 address 2404:6800:4006:802::1011 I knew World IPv6 [...]

During the International Rally of Queensland, it was interesting to observe how people made use of the radios provided for the event. In fact, watching peoples’ behaviour to me, made it clear that none of them had any training in how to use one of these devices. And they all struggled, mostly as a result [...]

If you ever decide to put any kind of sensitive receiver on a bicycle, you’ll want to avoid this ugly duckling of the bicycle lighting world: These lights are great from the illumination point of view, and they’re not badly priced either.  However, from an EMC viewpoint, they stink.  I was given one as a [...]

Well, today I got news that the Wireless Institute Australia has decided to change the cost of membership, not in the favourable direction either.  This, on top of a $1 increase in our annual license fees (to $66/year), and substantially blown out costs for obtaining a license. For someone like myself, who is no longer [...]

Yes, Bloody Microsoft yet again.  I want to know to whom do I make my invoice out to. We had a situation with one of my father’s laptops.  The DVD drive mysteriously stopped working a week or so ago.  Well, it could have been longer, but we noticed this then.   The machine is a [...]

Well, I did mention about the spam problem getting worse when we’re stuck with carrier NAT?  A bit of amusement as to how desperate they are getting… I have edited the links so that they do not link to the sites that they wanted to advertise. Hi, I left you a DOFOLLOW backlink on my [...]