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In this episode of Linux in the Ham Shack, Pete goes AWOL. While he’s out being dishonorably discharged, Harrison and Cheryl step in to fill his medium-sized shoes. We also get an interview with Bob, W9YA, current maintainer of YFKTest. He tells us all about the new and exciting world of YFKTest and how it’s not, in fact, dead.

73 de The LHS Guys

It’s the first episode of 2014, and we start the year off right: by talking about philosophy. Say what? Yep, that’s right. Trust us, it’s a lot more entertaining that it might at first sound. We have a special guest on the program, Ted (WA0EIR), who brings a through-provoking topic with him. Then we have a bunch of the usual suspects, including short topics on Linux, amateur radio, science and more. There is even feedback, info on our Indiegogo campaign for Hamvention and our Raspberry Pi giveaway. Don’t miss it!

73 de The LHS Guys

Episode #116 Audio (Listen now!):

This week in the heart-pounding, blood-stopping episode of Linux in the Ham Shack, our intrepid hosts discuss a variety of topics from call sign look-up databases to Ubuntu, freeware collaboration suites to mobile computing, and QRP kits to hosted developer platforms. As if that were not enough, there’s music, banter, a cameo by Wil Wheaton and a rocking good time. What more could you possible want?

73 de The LHS Guys

Introduction:

• Richard is looking forward to winter in Texas… all three days of it.

Announcements:

• Subscribers to LHS now have access to the Etherpad, or via the Etherpad link in the Content area of the LHS website.
• Black Sparrow Media now has a Twitter feed at BSM_Network.
• Richard rants: Ubuntu has added a nag screen to the download page requesting a donation.
• Linux Distributions for Ham Radio:
  • Has Shackbox died? There does not seem to be much activity since 2009.
  • Andy’s Ham Radio Linux CD by Andy, KB1OIQ, revisited. Version 11 was released in June, 2012, and is based on Ubuntu 11.10. Several of the tools have been updated to newer versions. Also at http://kb1oiq-andysham.sourceforge.net/
• Jeff Hodsdon published a list of influential ham radio operators, and neither Richard nor Russ are on that list! For shame!

Topics:

• Russ and Richard interview Scott, N8VSI, our LHS ambassador at the 2012 Ohio LinuxFest. He had demos of xastir, fldigi, yfktest, and others. Scott had two computers running and a Raspberry Pi. Sadly, the official LHS banner didn’t show up until two days after the event. Scott is a member of the West Chester Amateur Radio Club which operates from the Voice of America Bethany Relay Station.

Feedback:

• The Old Texas Engineer sent an audio response to Episode 88 about High Speed Multimedia and mesh networks. He gives us some history of HSMM in Texas and his experiences with the technology. He mentions the Open Mesh project and the South Texas Balloon Launch Team website.

Contact Info:

• Contact Richard at [email protected], Russ at [email protected], or both at the same time at [email protected].
• Listen to the live stream every other Tuesday at 8:00pm Central time. Check the LHS web site for dates.
• Leave us a voice mail at 1-909-LHS-SHOW (1-909-547-7469), or record an introduction to the podcast.
• Sign up for the LHS mailing list.
• Sign up for the MAGNetcon mailing list.
• LHS merchandise is available at the Merch link on Web site. Check out the Badgerwear or buy one of the other LHS-branded items at PrintFection.com/lhs or Cafe Press. Thanks!
• Thanks to Dave from Gamma Leonis for the theme music.

Music:

• “El Bubblino” by 20lb Sounds, from the album Bubblino. (That’s Dan Lynch’s band, one of the Linux Outlaws!)
• “Kitsch Me If You Can” by MMO, from the album Drunk Dial of the Year, courtesy of Jamendo.

Welcome to the latest installment of Linux in the Ham Shack. It’s almost time for Hamvention 2012! We hope that we’ll be able to see our listeners and friends at the Hara Arena in Dayton, Ohio from May 18th through the 20th. With your donations, the thermometer at left has almost exploded. If you can spare a dollar or two, we’ll be at our goal in no time.

In this episode, our trusty [sic] hosts talk with an Ambassdor. Richard’s interview with Ronny is so good it would make Anderson Cooper–well, throw up probably. They also discuss Linux topics like Mint-based distributions and irssi, an IRC chat client, as well as ham radio topics from HSMM to Winlink to contest loggers. The guys respond to a bunch of listener feedback and talk about some new features of the show.

A quick heads up: The interview audio is a little rough with some weird background anomaly. It won’t drive you mad, just make you wonder what was going on on Ronny’s side of the line. We suspect dinner and a seance.

73 de The LHS Guys

Introduction:

• Tornado season has begun in Texas! Check out the videos at kcares.info

Announcements:

• The donations for the LHS to Dayton Hamvention fund have stalled. If you’d like to see LHS return to the Hamvention this year, please make a donation in the next week or two. All donations will go toward the cost of the booth in the vendor exhibition hall. If we fail to raise enough to attend, then the funds will go toward the expenses of producing LHS.

Topics:

• Richard’s Linux Adventures
  • Thank You Kubuntu, for once again obliterating Richard’s boot sectors.
  • Russ suggests using dd to perform what is essentially a low-level format of the drive. For example,

    dd bs=1m if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda

    NOTE: This will totally erase your hard drive! Use caution!

  • Matthew, KC8BEW, in the chat room, suggests using Spinrite to repair a hard drive.
  • Richard declares that Debian is the Jesus Christ of Linux distributions, as it raised his hard drive from the dead, at least temporarily. It was the only distro he found that managed to install grub on the drive.
  • Richard also declares that Linux Mint sucks… at least for him. Audacity caused 100% CPU usage, spell check didn’t work, and it crashes.
  • Also discussed: CentOS, Scientific Linux, Fedora, PCLinuxOS, Xubuntu, lubuntu.
• Richard is writing an ebook on the National Traffic System.
• Russ again suggests Richard try Debian, but Richard says it won’t let him install Firefox. Maybe there’s a hardware issue? (Perhaps memtest might find a memory error? -Ed.)

Donations:

• We received several donations from visitors to the Dalton Hamfest and the KARC Hamfest. Thank you to our ambassador Ronny (K4RJJ) and to everyone who stopped by our booth at those events.
• Russ hoped to interview Roy, KK4ATD, our ambassador to the RARSfest last week. Apparently, the LHS booth was a great success.
• If you’d like to be an ambassador for LHS at an event, email us at [email protected] and visit the Ambassadors link on the web site.

Feedback:

• Fab, co-host of Linux Outlaws, left a couple comments on the website expressing his gratitude for being on the show.
• Bob (W9YA) offers Russ some suggestions for entering the contact exchange information in YFKtest.
• LinuxCanuck left a comment saying he enjoyed the episode with Fab, asks for help getting the feed links on the web site to work, and offers some thoughts about Kubuntu.
• Roy, KK4ATD, the LHS ambassador to RARSFest, calls in to the show and describes the event. He’s also building a repository of ham radio packages for CentOS, called Hamux.

Contact Info:

• Contact Richard at [email protected], Russ at [email protected], or both at the same time at [email protected].
• Listen to the live stream every other Tuesday at 8:00pm Central time. Check the LHS web site for dates.
• Leave us a voice mail at 1-909-LHS-SHOW (1-909-547-7469), or record an introduction to the podcast.
• Sign up for the LHS mailing list.
• Sign up for the MAGNetcon mailing list.
• LHS merchandise is available at the Merch link on Web site. Check out the Badgerwear or buy one of the other LHS-branded items at PrintFection.com/lhs or Cafe Press. Thanks!
• Thanks to Dave from Gamma Leonis for the theme music.