Back in high school, my friends and I produced a monthly homegrown cable TV showed called “Electric Reality Television” (“Wayne’s World”-style). “E-TV,” as we called it, aired for three years from 1996-1999 in Rhode Island and featured comedy sketches and musical guests. The “E-TV” clip below is from a May 8, 1997 performance by the band Groove Relativity of their song titled simply “3.”
For more music from the band and other clips, visit my YouTube channel.
HIAWATHA BRAY’S article “FCC OK’s Internet service rules’’ (Dec. 22, 2010 Boston Globe Business) showed some promise for those in favor of Net neutrality, however, the FCC’s vote to approve new rules governing the Internet fell far short of President Obama’s campaign promise to protect online free speech and commerce … [read the entire letter at boston.com]
This opinion piece originally appeared in the Boston Globe on Dec. 28, 2010.
Today ComCreations completed the launch of the Anacapa School’s new online portal. The new site replaces a nearly 10 year old design. By using WordPress and a theme based on Modularity Lite, the new site allows the office staff to make easy updates, as well as feature various school events and activities on the front page with a gorgeous slideshow that automatically pulls photos from the most recent “Latest News” posts. This project was the result of a tremendous effort by all of the faculty and staff at the school whom all contributed to the revision of Anacapa’s online presence.
This is my response to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski’s recent announcement in which he backpedals from his initial promise to support Net Neutrality. It seems that the term the FCC has coined “Open Internet” is what he is lobbying for now. This so-called “Open Internet” falls very short of the free speech protections needed to ensure continued growth from all sectors, not just media conglomerates.
Mr. Genachowski:
As vice president of a small cable operator and Internet service provider, I often find myself swimming upstream against the cable industry tides. Again, I find that my opinion is in opposition to that of most cable and phone companies, but I have not hidden my position on Net Neutrality from my industry colleagues.
The value of high-speed Internet service is based on the existence of an open and free network. Without that freedom, the Internet will become the nightmarish legal quagmire that cable and satellite TV tiers have become: a corporation-controlled landscape of confidential deals and force-fed consumers.
I am concerned about the recent developments that threaten free speech on the Internet. Less than five years ago, congress was poised to attack the cable networks’ programming tier model by mandating a-la-carté offerings. Today, amidst the political distractions of our nation’s other, seemingly more pressing woes, the Internet is edging closer and closer toward a locked-down oligarchical model and a disastrous future for consumers and small businesses alike. My challenge has been convincing other small and medium sized cable operators to see that it makes good business sense for them to support a neutral Internet, as a network under any other structure will stifle free speech under the control of the largest of the media giants.
I urge you, Mr. Chairman, to reconsider and take a stronger position in favor of Network Neutrality. As an advocate for the American people you owe it to them to protect online freedom of speech, which in the 21st century, is as important as any other.
Levi C. Maaia
Vice President, Full Channel
Warren, R.I.
Since writing the blog entry“Digital broadcast TV & the spectrum famine,” I have been thinking about the way the power to communicate has been acquired through the years. There is a great Ken Burns documentary titled “Empire of the Air: The Men Who Made Radio” which takes viewers on a journey through the ruthless early days of radio broadcasting. It makes the backstabbing surrounding the birth of Facebook shown in the movie “The Social Network” look like child’s play.
Today broadcasting, both TV and radio, has become nearly totally consolidated among a small group of national broadcasting conglomerates (save for NPR and the few community-based broadcast outfits), leaving few independent voices to be heard. Even cable TV, once a bastion of alternative entertainment, is now an expensive dumping ground for Viacom, Universal and Disney.
Will the cycle repeat itself with the Internet? Will the Web go from the Wild West that radio once was to the sterile, corporate mouthpiece that is broadcasting today? Early radio had its off-shore pirates, dissidents who were eventually quashed. Today it is the MP3 pirates who are in the corporate crosshairs. But all of the legal wrangling over the years begs the question: Who are the real radio pirates?
The image attached is a design I cooked up while staying up nights worrying about such banalities. Contact me if you would like to order a 24″ x 36″ poster print.
You might have noticed that the K6LCM Weather Camera has been offline quite a bit recently. I have been having some difficulty keeping a connection to the Wunderground FTP webcam server with the DCS-920 WiFi camera. Out of the box, the camera has an FTP client that can be configured to automatically send still images periodically to an FTP server.
I had originally configured this client to send images every 90 seconds to Wunderground. This would work for 2-3 hours and then quit, giving me an error that it could no longer connect to the server. Only restarting the camera would allow it to reconnect. I thought that there might be something wrong with my aging LAN router so I replaced that. No dice! After exchanging the camera for a new one I am still experiencing the problem. One thing that has me suspicious is that the DCS-920′s FTP client doesn’t seem to have a problem with any other FTP server except webcam.wunderground.com. I have no problem uploading images for days without interruption to my own FreeBSD-based maaia.com server.
If anyone out there in Blogland has any suggestions, I am open to them. Right now I have reduced the number of image uploads to once every 360 seconds. Maybe I was overloading the system (shot in the dark).
Updates to follow …
UPDATE November 5, 2010: While the DCS-920′s internal FTP client seems to be unreliable when set to the Weather Underground FTP server, the FTP client built into the software package EvoCam 3.6.9 ($30) is able to maintain a reliable image upload schedule. After two weeks of using the wireless DCS-920 with EvoCam I have had good results. EvoCam gives you many additional options including the ability to save time-lapse movies, add time and date stamps as well as record video when motion is detected. View live video from my camera at the K6LCM weather page.
The IEEE has a great article online about the radio spectrum shortage we are facing as demand increases for mobile broadband products. Here is a quick response:
The article mentions the glaring inefficient use of radio spectrum by broadcast digital TV (DTV). Even after the DTV transition, broadcast TV still occupies nearly 300 MHz of radio spectrum to directly deliver signal to just 10% of TV viewers. However, most cable and satellite operators also get signals from local TV stations over the air and then retransmit them through their respective systems. This is an abysmally inefficient way of delivering video to consumers and a waste of valuable spectrum. Our current scenario is a point-to-point delivery (TV station to cable provider) using a wide-area broadcast model which blankets the region with signals that few actually tune directly.
We need to develop a cost-effective point-to-point delivery system (either microwave or IP) for cable and satellite operators if we are to replace the out-dated model of VHF/UHF broadcast TV. Given that nearly no one receives mobile DTV and less than 10% of TV viewers watch fixed DTV from their home, it makes sense to begin to reclaim this spectrum for broadband applications. The best solution would be to require stations to share multicast frequencies and begin the process of spectrum reclamation. Begin this reclaimation slowly at first and then as the 10% shrinks even further, get more aggressive. Given current trends toward IP mobile video, in 5-10 years there will be nearly no one – except cable and satellite providers – receiving broadcast signals over the air.
Instead of providing low-cost DTV tuners and subsidizing the wasteful DTV transition, the Feds should be subsidizing broadband development in rural areas and providing free, very basic Internet and IPTV to qualifying homes.
After several months of mental planning I finally set up a companion weather webcam for my personal weather station. Over the summer I ran a few tests with a cheap USB webcam pointed out the front window, but the view of the yard proved to be rather uninteresting. What I really wanted to do was to capture the mountain-view I noticed from the roof while setting up the weather instruments. This view is not available from any interior portions of the house so I set out to design an outdoor wireless camera system for less than $100.
There are several options for outdoor cameras online. A simple Amazon.com search revealed many choices, but all of the all-weather WiFi units fell outside of the budget that I had restricted myself to. My requirements were that the camera and weatherproof housing be under $100. Given that the unit was to be mounted on the garage and the computer and wired Internet connections are in the main house I was also limited to a WiFi solution. I decided on the D-Link DCS920 Wireless-G Internet Camera, as it is a free-standing unit that can actually handle the scheduled capture and uploading of the images without the help of a computer. Many retailers have the DCS920 in the $80-$90 range.
The DCS920 is not an outdoor camera so I needed an enclosure that would both keep rain out and allow the camera lens to poke through. Camera in hand, I set off to Home Depot where a helpful employee knew right away what to use to keep it dry. He directed me to the electrical department and the Cantex Inc. 6 X 6 X 4 Junction Box. I was able to drill the necessary holes to mount the camera, make the power connection, and allow the lens to see the light of day. An additional make-shift clear plastic covering lets the lens see out, without letting water in. Home Depot also stocks a extension cord which was a near-match for the beige house color and made a less conspicuous power source than a traditional orange extension cord. The camera’s power adapter fit nicely inside the Cantex box alongside the camera, concealing the electrical connection from the rain as well.
The DCS920 has a Web interface that can be setup via Ethernet beforehand in order to enable the wireless connection to a secure 802.11g network. The interface is very basic, and does not readily allow one to keep local archives of images easily (there is an option to email a photo as well as upload it to one FTP server). Aftermarket software is available that allows for greater flexibility over nearly any webcam including the ability to add on-screen captions and time stamps, however I have opted to keep it simple for now.
After plugging in the settings for my Wunderground.com account my weather camera was up and running with a view of the Santa Ynez Mountain range above Santa Barbara. You will find time-lapse videos of the images gathered in the Wunderground archive.
Update October 2, 2010: It should be noted that the D-Link manual notes the following environmental specifications:
Operating temperature: 0°C to 40°C (32°F to 104°F)
Storage temperature: -20°C to 70°C (-4°F to 158°F)
Operating relative humidity: 20% to 80% non-condensing
Update November 5, 2010: The DCS-920′s internal FTP client seems to be unreliable when set to the Weather Underground FTP server, however the FTP client built into the software package EvoCam 3.6.9 ($30) is able to maintain a reliable image upload schedule. After two weeks of using the wireless DCS-920 with EvoCam I have had good results. EvoCam gives you many additional options including the ability to save time-lapse movies, add time and date stamps as well as record video when motion is detected. View live video from my camera at the K6LCM weather page.
I completed the installation of my new Ambient Weather WS-1080 on Tuesday. The WS-1080 is a relatively inexpensive ($109 PC / $119 Mac OS) personal weather station (PWS). I opted for the suggested solar shield – for more accurate temperature readings – which was on sale ($19.95) with the Mac bundle. The sensors consist of a anemometer (windspeed), wind direction indicator, hygrometer (relative humidity), thermometer, barometric pressure sensor and rain gauge. The sensor array is mounted on the rooftop and communicates with the main console via a 433MHz wireless link. The console then connects via USB to my Mac Mini which is then able to transmit the weather data via the Internet.
It was fun assembling the sensor array. Despite the low price tag the instruments and sensor components seem to be well made. The optional larger solar shield was quite a bit larger than the one included with the station but it seems to be providing adequate shielding. I have used other wireless thermometers and typically they become inaccurately high when the sun shines on them. Given that this unit is usually mounted where it will be in sunlight all day, this is an important consideration.
Once I had the array fully assembled and fixed to the included mounting pole I set up the ladder for the roof summit. My roof has a particularly large sanitary stack pipe (to provide proper clearance from the skylight) so I was able to mount it nearly five feet off the roof on just the pipe alone. Others who might not have such a mast already in place will want to consider a tripod or chimney mount.
The Mac software, WeatherSnoop that Ambient included with the Mac Package was very easy to set up and it flawlessly interfaced with the USB-connected LCD console. WeatherSnoop supports two of the most popular communities of amateur weather observers: Wunderground and CWOP/APRSWXNET. Wunderground in particular does a really nice job of promoting PWS usage. By default, visitors to its site are shown data from their nearest PWS, based on ZIP code. Live data from my station is the currently the default for the 93109 ZIP code. Wunderground also makes available a comprehensive collection of historical data and charts. Wunderground also offers a free iPhone app called Wunder. The app is pretty bare-bones, but it will be of interest especially to PWS owners who want a quick way to monitor their stations. Another nice feature of Wunderground is the ability to embed an HTML “sticker” of any PWS on your home page. You will see a number of options here for my station, including a pretty comprehensive Adobe Flash console (I haven’t figured out why no rain is being reported as “-999.00 in.” in the large Flash console. This software bug was fixed in Q4 2010 with a subsequent release of WeatherSnoop.):
A few pecadillos …
I originally installed two regular alkaline AA batteries from my battery bin in the roof-mounted array. In a little more than 24 hours the station was reporting negative temperatures online. I returned home to find that the sensor array was not communicating with the console. I suspected that the AAs were not fresh so I purchased a pack of lithium batteries as recommended by Ambient. Those setting up stations in cold weather will definitely want to opt for lithium cells as they considerably outperform alkaline in sub-freezing temperatures.
The WS-1080 has the ability to set relative pressure in the console to compensate for the elevation of the barometric pressure sensor for installation above sea level. For my location in Santa Barbara, Calif. at approx 125 feet above sea level that works out to about 0.1 inch of mercury. For a station in Denver, that would be more like five inches! WeatherSnoop version 1.7.3, which was included in the WS-1080′s box, seemed to ignore this issue and report absolute pressure. Upgrading to WeatherSnoop 1.7.4 seems to have solved this issue by calculating the corrected pressure based on the site elevation as set in the “My Site” tab in the software.
The rainfall indicator is reporting N/A or -999.00 depending on where you look in Wunderground. My console reads “0.0 inches.” WeatherSnoop’s documentation specifically says that “rain values are not transmitted to WeatherSnoop, even though they are shown on the console.” The documentation goes on to say, “Rain Total for Year – Obtained from the station (interpreted as total since reset).” I am not sure what that means and what the implications are. Since we won’t likely be getting rain in Southern California for at least another two to three months I guess we will have to wait and see.
If you have any questions, feel free to contact me or leave a comment below. I am still working out the kinks and learning how to best keep the station accurate and online and appreciate your feedback.
The 2003 Space Shuttle Columbia disaster was the second in just more than 100 flights of the shuttle fleet. (photo: Wikipedia)
After 9/11 the Bush administration’s knee-jerk reaction was to attempt to stem immigration and tighten airport security. After the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, Gov. Schwarzenegger’s reaction was to stem off-shore drilling. While I personally agree with the decision not to drill in the ocean I am not in favor of knee-jerk reactions, even if they have outcomes agreeable to me. Knee-jerk reactions that are 180 degrees from one’s original stance show poor planning and imply to me that the original decision was made in haste.
Schwarzenegger has known the risks of off-shore drilling for years, yet he continued to support its expansion. This BP spill in the Gulf didn’t change the risk ratio, it merely made it very real for many, many people. It is politically wise for politicians to withdraw support for drilling after this incident but their motivations are suspect. It reminds me of one famous CalTech physicist who discovered that the risk of catastrophic failure of the Space Shuttle was greater than 1 in 100. So-called “NASA experts” at the time had put the risk much much lower saying the shuttle was safe and that the Challenger accident had resulted in serious safety improvements, suggesting that Feynman’s estimates were grossly overstated. Space Shuttle Columbia, the second shuttle to be destroyed in a catastrophic failure was the 113th flight. Had proper research been done and warnings been heeded in the first place the second disaster might have been prevented. Draw whatever parallels you may to our current disaster in the Gulf.
RT @tednesi: Sirius will air the Super Bowl in Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, German, Hungarian, Portuguese, Russian, Dutch and French: htt ... [read tweet]2012/02/04
If campaigns are spending billions on advertising, why do local broadcasters charge viewers more than ever? http://t.co/xhXNRCCD[read tweet]2012/02/04
HIAWATHA BRAY’S article “
, as it is a free-standing unit that can actually handle the scheduled capture and uploading of the images without the help of a computer. Many retailers have the DCS920 in the $80-$90 range.
I completed the installation of my new Ambient Weather WS-1080 on Tuesday. The WS-1080 is a relatively inexpensive (
