If you are using Ubuntu Linux you might have problems to open the Dutch WebSDR page. The problems appears in both, Firefox and Chrome. Canonical does not ship the Sun’s Java Runtime Environment anymore with Ubuntu. Instead they included OpenJDK and IcedTea, a Java Web browser plugin. Unfortunately, IcedTea does not work with the WebSDR Java Applet. However, there exists a solution. Read how I fixed the problem.
A couple of weeks ago I migrated one of my older machines to the new Ubuntu 10.04 “Lucid Lynx”. I must admit that Canonical did a tremendous job with their Linux Distribution. Ubuntu is definitely worth a look. It can be booted directly from CD and does not need any installation. It’s stable, fast, has an excellent User Interface and provides applications for all standard needs… and YES, it’s MUCH more secure than Windows! With it’s centralized Software Repository, there is no more need for keeping all your applications individually up to date. This service does everything, just with a single click. Awesome!
And – there is also a Amateur Radio community. Thanks to Martin, AA6E who recently made me aware on this. The PPA (Personal Package Archive) of the Ubuntu Amateur Radio Team takes care of a nice list of Linux Ham Radio applications, including for example the famous GNU Radio, a Software Defined Radio toolkit.
In case you haven’t checked out Ubuntu yet, go to the Ubuntu.com website and download a free copy, burn it on CD and take a testdrive!
When I write scripts in Python, I prefer to write them under Linux. I personally use Ubuntu in a Virtual Machine, powered by Sun’s free VirtualBox. There are of course several ways to share data between Linux and Windows but I decided to incorporate my last acquisitions, a Network Attached Storage Device called Drobo / Droboshare. In this post you will read how to connect Linux (Ubuntu 9.10) to your Drobo.
I decided to have a deeper look into Flexradio’s SDR Software PowerSDR. PowerSDR is published as open source under the GPL license and was written under Visual Studio 2003 against the old .NET 1.1 Framework. Unfortunately, the code was never migrated to a higher Version of Visual Studio. The last couple of days I had enough time to dive deep into the source code and finally make it compilable under Visual Studio 2008. In this post I’ll share the details with you.
[This article has been updated on 7/April/2010]
I’m a fan of Microsoft’s Windows, but I must admit that in some cases, Linux and MacOS outperform good old Windows. In Linux (Gnome) and MacOS I enjoy the freedom to scroll in partially hidden windows without having to click on them. I was missing this possibility for a very long time on my windows based computers. Recently I stumbled upon a free software tool which finally solves this problem. Katmouse is a tiny application which allows you to scroll in windows without having to click on them. This Video reviews the software and illustrates its advantages!
Have you ever heard about Drobo? Drobo is a Network Attached Storage (NAS) from the Silicon Valley based startup Data Robotics. Last week I implemented a Drobo in my backup strategy. With this step I finally added a significant level of data safety to my IT system.
In a previous article, I presented the principals and best practices to create an individual data backup strategy. In this article I will describe my individual backup and data storage strategy and discuss the advantages and weaknesses
Have you ever lost pictures, logbooks or the source code you have worked so hard on during the last few nights? Then you have already experienced how painful the loss of data can be. If you want to avoid this unpleasant experience, it’s definitely the right moment to think about a data backup strategy. I’ll split up this topic in two separated posts. In this post I would like to present you the most important factors you need to consider when defining a backup strategy. In the second post I’ll present you my backup strategy and how I implemented it.