Ham Radio Ecclesiastes

"Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath been already of old time, which was before us."  Eccl 1:10.

We often hear complaints about the decline of Amateur Radio in one way or another.  Often people say that we just don't build stuff the way we used to.  Well now, 'twas ever thus!

You can read it yourself in the pages of QST for March, 1916.  That's an article by Lloyd Manuel called "Thoughts of the Good Old Palmy Days".  He's talking about his old-time experiences -- probably ca 1905 -- when men were men and hams had to build their own stuff!

This article is a transcription from the QST archives.  You may be interested to browse through selected portions of early QST at history.aa6e.net.

Locating amprnet

Remember ham radio's allocation of Internet address space?  (44.0.0.0/8) Thanks to xkcd, here it is in graphical form, ca. 2006 (red circle):

Right between Bell North and Japan Inet.  (Larger size at http://xkcd.com/195/.) You can buy a poster version of this at http://store.xkcd.com/.  (A good place to find gifts for the geek in your life.)

Pillar Question

I note that ARRL now has "five pillars", recently up from four. But wait, there are five pillars of Islam, too. Some forms of Buddhism have ten pillars. So what's this about "pillars"?

Inquiring minds want to know how many pillars are optimum. We consult the oracle - Google - with a request to find all occurrences of "N pillars" - from "One pillar" to "twenty pillars". The following is the result -- worthy of deep contemplation.

Weird Words: Wattage, Architect

Some words bother me. Maybe I'm showing my age, I know. But consider.

Wattage - The better word is "power" or "power rating". A 60 Watt light bulb has a 60 Watt power rating. A 10 Watt bulb is a low power bulb.

On the other hand, "wattage" is a parallel of "voltage", and I don't have the same reaction to that word. The "correct" words would be "potential" or "electromotive force".

Then why don't we say "amperage", "ohmage", "faradage", or "henryage"? Actually, I do hear "amperage", but not commonly.

[We seem to have some confusion between a quality (power) and the unit used to measure the quality (the Watt). In economics, there is something similar. The currency system may be called Stirling or RenMinBi, while the unit is the Pound or the Yuan. In the US, alas, we can only say "the Dollar" for both.]

Architect - When did we start using "architect" as a verb? I think I noticed it first in the computing world in the late 1980's. Why isn't "design" good enough? Maybe we IT gurus want to give the impression that we are a cut above traditional engineering professions? (Alas, the opposite is more often true.)

That's all for now from your local curmudgeon shop.

The Perfect Cartoon

XKCD of course: here.

WETI Project

The "Wait for Extraterrestrial Intelligence" Program is off to a good start.

I am currently a member in good standing of the WETI-at-home project, which runs at blazing speed, even with my PC in the "off" position.

Check out the poster (PDF) for the full scoop.

Thanks to Universe Today.