For the most part, the station has been tracking balloons this month as part of it’s duty in supporting university academic activities. The balloons launched were student built projects for masters projects, and they all worked to varying degrees of success. Initially we had Project Strathosphere, however this was launched on a day that I wasn’t able to track it and as such there’s no data downlinked, however it was launched and recovered successfully, admittedly with a little bit of luck. This used the base design for electronics was one that was developed with STAC providing the essential basics. This project had a wire dipole for an antenna. …

It’s happened a couple of times, you know. I’ve lost everything on the server, had to move on and set up again. Life as a geek is so hard, eh? Each time I learn a bit about what I should have been doing, but forget to implement it and repeat the cycle. So what did I learn this time round? Backups are priceless The amount of time I’ve spent setting up apache, mysql, pisg, and the numerous other things that I run has been unreal. My skills may be a bit out of practice, but I don’t intend to be a sysadmin, so I don’t need to keep them in check. …

So a while back I got one of those Android phones. The ones running that system that google develops, Android. More precisely, I got a white HTC Dream – The T-Mobile G1. From the outset, let me say, this phone’s a classic, in my opinion. It really started the modern smartphone era, where we’ve seen the rise of mobile operating systems, the race to and beyond 1GHz and multicore processors in mobile devices, and companies redefining themselves. It’s been great to watch as a technology enthusiast! …

Okay, okay, I know I’m crap at doing these blog-type things, but I guess this is just becoming a bin for things I’ve done that I find interesting. And on that note… I’m working on what I’d call an exiting new project – it’s a new website that I’m working on that’s somewhat taking up all my time… I’ll reveal the address at a later date. It’s proved interesting so far – the biggest problems I’ve had are file permissions and relearning bash… Meaning that I’ve had to learn quite a lot about the Linux file permission way of working, and get my C based head around bash! …

This pass started off quiet but got busier towards the end, as the ISS passed over the more Eastern European countries. The APRS software, AGWTracker, had some difficulty as not all station include their Latitude and Longitude data in the packets I was hearing. Also, updating the Keps was a good plan - everything was much clearer, even after our tracking software (currently Nova for Windows) said the ISS was out of range! …