SO, here’s the scenario: you’re getting ready for school, listening to the radio, and a song comes on, and you think, “Hey, this is pretty darn decent!” By the time you get to school, it’s stuck in your head, and it stays there for the REST OF THE DAY, but what is it? This is where Midomi comes in… it allows you to hum or whistle a bit of a song into the microphone of your computer, iPod touch, or iPhone, and it will tell you the name of it! It’s basically voodoo magic. Again, Midomi.com is where you can find it, and you can help out to improve it by submitting your own recordings. Give it a shot!

Hello all… I’m being told that the server that this website is on will be turned private after the first of the year. A little bit short notice, eh?

Anyhow, everything on here has been backed up, and so there may be a little bit of downtime following the first of the year until I move it someplace else. So… heads-up, guys, and I apologize in advance if it does happen.

I know many people, including myself, sometimes find new Math concepts hard to understand, or you just don’t get it fully when the teacher explains it in class. Too busy to visit the math lab, or don’t understand the homework? It’s ok, try using Wolfram Alpha, a “computational knowledge engine”. What does that mean? Basically, you type in your math problem, and it will walk you through, step-by-step, how to get the answer. The address for Wolfram Alpha is simply www.WolframAlpha.com. And it’s not limited to just Math, in fact, it does almost EVERYTHING, from Chemistry, to Physics, to Statistics, to Biology, Earth Science… give it a try. If you’re not sure how, click on “Examples” on the homepage, and it will tell you exactly how.

This week’s tech tip was about a free alternative image editor. This tip is also directed more towards those of you who have taken, or are currently taking Photo classes here at Thomas, or those of you who are interested in using Adobe Photoshop. Instead of having to pay hundreds of dollars for the latest version of Photoshop, try the GIMP, which is a free alternative. You can download it at www.gimp.org/windows/. It acts a lot like Photoshop, and will even open Photoshop files, which means you can work on your Photo projects at home without having to buy the program. If you’ve used Adobe Illustrator, a vector image creation program, here at school and you want a copy for home, try Inkscape, a free alternative to it (the Titan Tech Tip logo was made in Inkscape…) You can download it at http://www.inkscape.org/download/, and make sure to click on “Windows – .exe installer”. Picnik is another free, online image editor, which is very user-friendly and makes it easy to add effects quickly and effectively to your photos… you can access it at www.picnik.com. Enjoy!

Well, everyone gets their fair share of spam, but sometimes I just cannot understand these… And this one was quite entertaining. Let’s look!

isnt life surprising i was laying awake thinking last night about how different my life has gone then what i thought (in a good way)

cate (incredulously) what were you a child of adam and eve

but the main thing i love about this picture is tree cover you can see in the upper right corner thats how it was all around the block even on really hot days you could find a great place to play in some serious shade everyone had a huge tree or trees somewhere on their property and bushes and ivy and a great variety of things the only reason we had those young trees on the corner was because my mom sold our big palm tree to some palm springs landscapers ha

remember when the weather was warm and we would go to the park when daddy got home from work and we would bring homemade bread and fruit to eat for dinner and we would be drenched in golden light and the cousins would come meet us for some wild rides down the slide

how have you been surprised what can i say

from anthro

grant and i talked last fall about wanting to take control and own a home and make some of our dreams a reality so we planned to move back to california for some opportunities there

goal peaceful nights productive days

did anyone else sustain life with saltines from the ages of 13-17

i got a lot emails about what i eat and how it effects pcos- so i hope you dont mind if i just answer all the questions here instead of going through each email

snacks NUTS i would die without nuts i love roasted almonds cashews peanuts i also love those roasted edamame they taste like nuts even though theyre not and nuts taste really good with a few slices of swiss cheese also deli meat slices celery with peanut butter on it a few whole grain crackers with cheese beef jerky sugar free snack packs stuffed mushrooms hard boiled eggs string cheese protein bars crudites and more NUTS

and that made me think of all the insomniatic nights that she stayed up with me and mirrored my every move and snuggled me right out of my anxiety into dreamland long after grant and cate had drifted off

hard to find only a little ive met some truly kindred spirits in my life so far especially my two nicoles (well coco i not so much met as i was born to the same parents) i love them girls and their cute purses

he is the perfect mix to me of blues and folk and funk and feeling

seriously though my closest friends are fun real and honest good entertaining in love with life a little crazy down to earth deep and incapable of bs

where are neighborhoods like that anymore with bushes big enough to hide in and kids that go around the block together all afternoon and normal sized houses and the old winkfields next door ok i dont need the winkfields but id sure love to give my kids the rest

i love all the sweet artistically talented bloggers that offer free downloads around holidays for us readers

And you kind of wonder, after reading… “What the hell just happened?”

Righto, well, off to do some reading for school, Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle. And hopefully, within the next few days, I’ll have a posting up here of a couple projects that I will be undertaking, one involving a Motorola UHF Maratrac I received, and the other involving the replacement of a surface-mount microphone on an LG VX8700 cellphone.

Cheers, until then!

OK, here’s my results from the 2009 ARRL January VHF contest… I ran FM on 2m and 440, with 75w on a JPole for 2 but only 5w on my HT/whip for 440, which was the reason for the low Q# there. For some reason, I’m missing Q number 13, as well. Huh.

I will also, later, have the results from the W2WHS Webster High Schools Amateur Radio Club effort in the contest.

Contacts: 29 (25 2m, 4 440)
Contact-points: 33 (25pts 2m + 8pts 440)
Grids: 4 (FN12, FN13, FN02, FN03)
Total grids: 6 (FN12 2m/440, FN13 2m/440, FN03 2m, FN02 2m)
Final Score: 33 pts x 6 grids = 198 points

Well, I decided, this weekend, to contact K2NNY, a station operated from Northern New York by some members of the Rochester DX Association for the 2008 ARRL Sweepstakes Phone. So, I heard them, and tried to call them, but they weren’t answering, so I decided to make some contacts and try later. Before I knew it, I had 144 contacts, and it was the next day!

So, without further ado, here are my stat’s from this year’s sweepstakes, my first ever:

Contacts Made: 144

Bands Operated: 80, 40, 20

Sections Worked: 45 unique, as follows: 18 VA, 16 MDC, 10 IL, 9 OH, 7 MI, 5 MO, 5 IN, 4 WMA, 4 WI, 4 STX, 4 NC, 3 SD, 3 MR, 3 ME, 3 LA, 3 ENY, 3 EMA, 2 WNY, 2 TN, 2 SNJ, 2 SJV, 2 SF, 2 SCV, 2 RI, 2 NH, 2 MN, 2 GA, 2 CT, 2 CO, 2 AL, and singles from WWA, WVA, WPA, WCF, SDG, NTX, NNY, NNJ, NM, NJ, KY, KS, EPA, EB, and BC.

So, I had quite a bit of fun! They have all been added to the ham radio log page on this website. A full list of the contacts made during the contest follows the break.

Q#	Callsign	Date	Time On	Freq	Check	Section
1	NC1I	2008-11-5	21:32	7208	73	WMA
2	W3IDT	2008-11-5	21:35	7219	57	MDC
3	W8RC	2008-11-5	21:37	7235	48	MI
4	K2PLF	2008-11-5	21:38	7235	55	MDC
5	N4ZZ	2008-11-5	21:39	7240	57	TN
6	K9CT	2008-11-5	21:40	7243	67	IL
7	WA1BXY	2008-11-5	21:42	7246	06	RI
8	K9MOT	2008-11-5	21:46	7250	96	IL
9	N8MRC	2008-11-5	21:47	7266	96	MI
10	K9MV	2008-11-5	21:48	7266	99	IN

(more…)

Well, my dad decided to wash his cellphone, except I think he really didn’t mean to.. well, the upside is that I got to gut the phone in drying it out, and it’s actually working, somewhat.. there’s some leftover rubbing alcohol in the screen which is drying out (I used alcohol to displace the water) but I think the mic might be busted, kinda killing the whole phone aspect of it

Enjoy the pictures, tho!

I saw this interesting error on Facebook when going to view a video that was commented on by someone in my friends list, resulting in it being bumped to my attention. This message.. I don’t know, sorta makes sense, sorta doesn’t Sure, alpha does, but alpha console? It sounded rather… spaceship-jargon like. Like… here’s an alpha console:

Props to whoever can correctly name what movie that picture is.. based off of. I actually stole the picture from something on the BBC website, but that’s beside the point.

Just a curiosity I thought I would mention