So I’ve been playing with info-beamer lots recently, as part of my attempts to relearn how to be a clever person. Having seen it at 31c3, I was curious how I could use it and how much work it was to make it display information. After reading the documentation, I’m really impressed with how easy it is to do seemingly clever things with. The base frames for displaying data are written in lua, which seems sensible and easy enough to read to enable hacking at. It’s also, I’ve been told, quick as fuck. The software itself has a server awaiting UDP on port 4444, and a defined way of importing that into the system. This is really neat - if you want to send data directly to it, and have new things appear on screen, it’s pretty easy to do. …

This was originally posted when I worked for Crossing Zebras under the name Hibbie as an internet spaceship columnist. It’s here for completeness of my writing. It feels like it’s been a long, long time since I was a new player. To be perfectly honest, I can’t remember why I joined the game, but my corporate history suggests I was a Fw4pper and then, after a typically short time, a 5punker. This was a forum I was on, so I must have heard about spaceships and joined. EVE was my first MMO, and I went in with no expectations. …

This was originally posted when I worked for Crossing Zebras under the name Hibbie as an internet spaceship columnist. It’s here for completeness of my writing. In large organisations it’s really easy to get lost. When there are thousands of people surrounding you, all talking constant shit, it’s difficult to see regular faces and make strong connections with anyone. EVE, at its core, is a social experience, and without friends the game is lonely, difficult to learn, and nearly impossible to succeed at. With this in mind, Goonfleet introduced Squadrons in 2006 – a method of subdividing the member base into smaller groups in order to give newbies and veterans an anchor within the corp. …

CampGND Draws closer, and I’m worried about ’the project'. Having got really excited about SATnogs, it’s been really frustrating to learn that the project is currently just a shell of what it could be. As far as I can see, there’s some STL files describing items to be printed, some software and some other things, but a complete lack of documentation. Poking through other branches of the main software, I did find what looked like a kind-of-incomplete bill of materials. …

So, campGND is about to happen and I’m beginning to look forward to it. Unfortunately for me, Tom’s told me I should have a project - I can’t just turn up and be a gin fuelled rocket for the duration. I mean, that’s going to happen anyway, but whatever, I can be productive too. Given that my favourite toy is radios and space, I figured I should do spaceradio stuff. I’ve had the half-idea of doing a portable satellite tracking unit for a while. I want to get back into nerdy radio again, and it’s a pretty good way of doing it. Searching, stumbling and coming across things lead me to SatNOGS - A modular, open ground station built around VHF/UHF. The target platform is, of course, rtl-sdr, arduino and, surprisingly, a TP-Link WR703N. …