Scott VE3QBZ

https://mastodon.clitheroe.ca/@scott

Amateur radio operator - VE3QBZ
- morse code
- PSK31/Olivia/Hellschreiber
- packet radio (HF & VHF)

Naval Communicator, Royal Canadian Naval Reserve
Principal, Compute & Virtualization, large Canadian telco

Location: Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, FN03EF

Situated upon the traditional territories of the Erie, Neutral, Huron-Wendat, Haudenosaunee and Mississaugas

Matrix: Scott VE3QBZ (npub1040…r57u):clitheroe.ca
Packet Radio Node: VE3QBZ-7

Public Key

npub1040ednrg80lpjkg420mjzjtl2hkjurez5qttfqqhwtpvzpn8fnlsv5r57u

NIP-05 Address

[email protected]

Profile Code

nprofile1qqs86huke35rhlsety248aepf9l4tmfwpu32q945sqth9skpqen5elcpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0ds77hh2r

Publishing to

relay.damus.io

nos.lol

Author Public Key

npub1040ednrg80lpjkg420mjzjtl2hkjurez5qttfqqhwtpvzpn8fnlsv5r57u

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Last Notes

2026-05-15 15:45:11 UTC

Traffic on our way to the Fogo Island ferry
https://mastodon.clitheroe.ca/system/media_attachments/files/116/579/362/951/565/796/original/aed2cb0fb5503341.jpg

2026-04-21 21:43:47 UTC

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Illness, Medication, Stress, Alcohol, Fatigue, Emotion
aka, IMSAFE - a great mnemonic for any safety critical endeavour!

2026-04-16 03:01:37 UTC

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Glass Tiger and Don't Forget Me (When I'm Gone) might not get myyyy vote (not by a longshot, lol), but it sure had legs here (quadruple platinum) and reached the top-10 in US charts, plus a Grammy nomination to go along with the Juno awards.

2026-02-12 01:38:58 UTC

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I'd be fine with it until they ran their vacuum cleaners or it was time to trim my nails

2026-02-08 17:44:26 UTC

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It's a weird kind of double speak, because one of the points of a security clearance is to figure out if there is information or circumstances that _could_ be used to create undue influence on a person - if they are afraid the government could weaponize it, it means adversaries could too...

2026-01-27 01:37:07 UTC

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That's a really good link, thanks!

2026-01-20 17:40:01 UTC

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Even into the 2010's, BGP peering was a phone call to someone you knew, and who knew who you were, and done live on that call, even when dealing with some of the largest technology companies in the world. It was definitely a different era.

2026-01-17 02:39:34 UTC

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Your post was understood in that context 100%! :) But when else would I get to post a picture of mine 🤠

2026-01-17 01:26:26 UTC

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This is the challenge coin my daughter gave me when, as RCN enlisted, I gave her her first salute after her commission as an officer in the RCAF.
That salute was more or less my motivation for getting through basic training as a 48 year old.
https://mastodon.clitheroe.ca/system/media_attachments/files/115/907/797/511/661/146/original/8c92abc697e5d8fb.png
https://mastodon.clitheroe.ca/system/media_attachments/files/115/907/798/103/042/325/original/30acf243ec177f1f.png

2025-12-21 17:36:27 UTC

My favourite bookmark. Create a bookmark with the javascript below as the URL, and drop it on the Favourites Bar in #firefox, and now you can pop any tab out into a frameless window.
Makes a great way of consuming your mastodon instance's UI; it's like a faux PWA (and great for many responsive sites)
javascript:(function(){ window.open( window.location.href, '_blank', 'resizable=1,location=1,menubar=0,toolbar=0,personalbar=0,scrollbar=1,status=0' ); })();

2025-11-09 18:34:39 UTC

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you might see an increase in media storage requirements from the (now) default reply post fetching - I noticed this when I enabled it in 4.4

2025-09-29 23:34:45 UTC

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The wind was howling in the cove, driving some pretty good sized waves
https://mastodon.clitheroe.ca/system/media_attachments/files/115/290/200/558/700/980/original/846ea23724466fa4.jpg

2025-09-29 23:32:54 UTC

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A wide angle view of Cedar Cove and the grounded ship
https://mastodon.clitheroe.ca/system/media_attachments/files/115/290/194/108/195/197/original/3d290223f898d059.jpg

2025-09-29 23:17:02 UTC

Hiked out to see the MSC Baltic III grounded in Cedar Cove. This was a side quest for sure, but apparently has been quite a popular attraction since its grounding, according to the locals.
https://mastodon.clitheroe.ca/system/media_attachments/files/115/290/127/668/411/301/original/4ec483324f8c75e8.jpg

2025-09-25 01:44:07 UTC

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In Transistor? If you start typing in the "add new station" dialog it will search radio-browser.info , or accept a URL. So if it shows up via search it's quick to add, otherwise I just look for the stream address manually.
The killer feature for me for Transistor is you can add a station shortcut to the home screen on the phone, and it will start playing that stream immediately if you tap it - you don't have to hit play once the app launches.

2025-09-25 01:30:36 UTC

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Transistor is also on F-Droid, and is super-simple. I love it.

2025-09-24 22:04:58 UTC

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an abyss of Stygian proportions

2025-09-24 21:45:21 UTC

@npub1yqw…ywz8 😭

2025-09-04 18:01:40 UTC

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X forwarding for Wayland would be great
Edit: comment made before I saw your logical flow - obviously Wayback would do this by default because X is before Wayland going left to right. I get it now. Thanks!

2025-09-02 18:37:35 UTC

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XFS and ext4 carry the mail. We're an XFS shop at work, at home it's ext4

2025-08-25 02:19:25 UTC

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e-edition as a ready to run kiki site would be...fine :)
I look forward to whatever formats it's published in

2025-08-23 17:00:51 UTC

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outstanding! Telegard was what I ran primarily, post-Opus.

2025-08-09 22:04:52 UTC

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There is also AREDN which is like amateur radio mesh networking, that also plays in 900mhz and 2.4Ghz wifi spectrum: https://www.arednmesh.org/
I think that stuff is also technically unlicensed despite the amateur radio moniker. And I believe it's mostly built by flashing custom firmware onto wifi routers and whatnot.

2025-08-09 21:48:29 UTC

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I'm not super familiar with unlicensed spectrum, but at 900mhz, the ISM band is unlicensed and available, subject to pretty low power requirements. That's where LoRA and Meshtastic play a lot - there is a _ton_ of interest in Meshtastic in and outside of ham radio.

2025-08-09 00:09:51 UTC

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Ohhhhh, I totally missed that 1.1.0 included the gopher support! This is job #1 after the Debian 13 upgrade work this weekend :) I will definitely let you know when I've got it packet radio enabled!

2025-08-07 15:44:12 UTC

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Pretty much that :)

2025-08-07 14:09:16 UTC

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I mention Linux and LibreOffice, and she turns around and says "That sounds great, but every time you say things like that I worry that one day I will wake up and we will be living in a bush somewhere" ... double woof
I made her a fresh coffee and move rooms. No good is coming of this domestic technology roadmap conversation, at this time.

2025-08-07 14:06:33 UTC

My wife expressing disgust/annoyance/cognitive dissonance at her laptop's forced Windows 11 upgrade.. "What is this, a Mac Apple or something?".. woof.

2025-08-07 01:05:36 UTC

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I get it! Check out my mouse pad, it's leather, and I've had it for probably 15 years now? Maybe even longer (I'd have to really think about it)
https://mastodon.clitheroe.ca/system/media_attachments/files/114/984/792/527/212/792/original/0922c6a9b2d338c7.png

2025-08-02 20:33:37 UTC

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I'm really looking forward to it. What I'll do is read the section on a given language feature, then read the corresponding (and shorter) section in "Squeak by Example". It should track pretty well considering Squeak is the direct descendant of Smalltalk 80.
The second half of the book looks like a journey all its own - it will be interesting to read how they designed the virtual machine.

2025-08-02 19:44:59 UTC

Been waiting weeks for this book and it finally arrived! In good shape too! (1985 printing)
#Smalltalk
https://mastodon.clitheroe.ca/system/media_attachments/files/114/960/874/582/221/827/original/a78134da54e0b197.jpg

2025-07-28 01:49:41 UTC

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I remember small memory model in DOS being tight at times, and that was with an entire 64k to play with - the C64, I imagine, offers up considerably less than 64k, considering that's all it has to begin with.

2025-07-18 18:01:18 UTC

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Would separating the UI elements (objects) into their own VMs break reflection? Because that is the magic stuff that makes Smalltalk amazing (and human)
I'm thinking maybe it wouldn't, because in smalltalk that's all message passing too, I believe (I'm still learning, so if I'm wrong, I'm listening)

2025-07-13 03:13:59 UTC

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what smalltalk is that a screenshot of? I'm learning the Squeak smalltalk implementation right now and loving it.

2025-07-12 02:29:44 UTC

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I don't know if you'd consider it cheating, but browsh is _insane_ as a console browser. It relies on Firefox under the covers, but I consider that acceptable, it's still text mode :)
https://www.brow.sh/
This _would_ get you a modern website in a text session, it'll even play youtube vids,

2025-06-29 15:48:43 UTC

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My horror workflow goes like this:
control arm bolts are rusted into the bushing (no problem, cut them off, done it before and I _do_ have a complete set of spare control arm bolts)
Cuts bolts off
Finds out the snap rings holding the bushings into the control arm are completely rusted in place, and old bushing cannot be removed, and now there is no way to put control arm back on the jeep because of seized bolt remainder in bushing.
This is a genuine, high risk failure scenario for this work

2025-06-29 15:33:41 UTC

Caught between "this is the ideal day to do the suspension bushings on the jeep because if I mess up I have three days to fix it and still be able to drive to work on Wednesday" vs "I have three days off, do I really want to blow a day doing suspension bushings on the jeep in this awesome weather"

2025-06-20 15:22:19 UTC

I planned for new tires in the fall, not this week...
https://mastodon.clitheroe.ca/system/media_attachments/files/114/716/368/574/237/164/original/28335bb81ecf8509.png

2025-06-17 12:17:25 UTC

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no, but please tell me more! I'm currently interested in the MQTT and TiledMap code I've found on Squeakmap, which would be a good start to writing a couple apps/learning exercises (e.g.. an amateur radio APRS app, or something related to my BirdNet–Go bird call detector)
Are there other valuable kinda baseline packages or collections of code I should add to my image?

2025-06-02 19:36:47 UTC

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Today, on a lark, I uploaded the image I was working in yesterday to this: https://squeak.js.org/
And up popped the entire environment, the GUI, all my windows open where they lay when I saved last night, my sample app running, etc, in my browser.
I'm familiar, of course, with object serialization, but this is a whole other level of that.
https://mastodon.clitheroe.ca/system/media_attachments/files/114/615/444/912/549/022/original/699aa0ca5ad2aec4.png

2025-06-02 12:27:17 UTC

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That, plus the image based environment, leads to statements like this in Squeak By Example: "The image that you have been working with is a descendant of the
original Smalltalk-80 image created in the late 1970s. Some of these objects
have been around for decades!"
It's not that the code has been around that long, it's that literally, these objects have _existed_ in the memory of a Smalltalk VM image that long.
The whole thing is dizzying, but I'm very drawn to it.

2025-06-02 04:56:48 UTC

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how about this? You don't create subclasses - you send your desired superclass a message asking it to create the subclass!
I haven't totally wrapped my head around this yet, but this is apparently exactly what happens - classes are themselves objects in Smalltalk.

2025-06-02 04:11:27 UTC

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To be fair, that was a pretty contrived example - We could have created a new class inheriting from string and added our method. It was mostly demonstrating the use of the browser.
Something else wild - you can search for methods by providing the receiver of a message, and what the answer to that message should be - it will find a selector (a message, or method if you will) that returns what you are looking for. It's so...different
https://mastodon.clitheroe.ca/system/media_attachments/files/114/611/803/243/015/080/original/8d2c203ad48e9c27.png

2025-06-02 02:19:25 UTC

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It's wild already. We're 24 pages in, and we added a method to an existing class..we didn't create a new class and inherit, we just uh...modified the system's String class directly.

2025-06-02 00:06:11 UTC

Off we go...
#Smalltalk
https://mastodon.clitheroe.ca/system/media_attachments/files/114/610/847/540/152/536/original/a1bfcc931340aec1.png

2025-06-01 04:15:47 UTC

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Ah maybe it is better left in the past then. I liked the early days for sure (exactly the time frame you are referencing). I just realized "official" UO is still around as a free / optionally paid thing, and I had no idea Outlands (as an example) doesn't use the original map - that would be crushing.

2025-06-01 03:58:59 UTC

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Do they change the core game at all, or is it just not the same because it's not as big as back in the day? I hesitate to even investigate because the memories of that time and virtual place are not to be trifled with or diminished :) I have the deepest fondness for the game, and I wasn't even close to being a powerful player - I was more a resident of Britannia than any hero or villain. I was happy to chop wood or herd sheep with the occasional adventure.

2025-06-01 03:27:03 UTC

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do you ever play at all on UO Outlands or similar? I'm almost afraid to investigate that :)

2025-05-30 23:16:42 UTC

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I got to see them live, they were great!

2025-05-28 16:43:30 UTC

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skullcaps and fancy shirts brings back a lot of memories too :)

2025-05-28 16:31:01 UTC

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I taught myself quite a few of the UO tracks on guitar back in the day, I will have to check this out. I can still hear many of them in my head clear as a bell to this day.

2025-05-26 03:55:02 UTC

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yes, I felt the same. It's a bit dizzying.
The entire concept of images is fascinating to me - you are essentially writing the app live, from the inside out. It's not even an app really, it's an entire live ecosystem.

2025-05-26 03:20:19 UTC

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I was hung up deciding whether to start with Squeak or Pharo, but I think I've decided to begin with Squeak

2025-05-26 02:57:43 UTC

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wow! I've been dancing around the idea of learning smalltalk for the last week or two. I have Squeak and Pharo sitting on my machine right now, and I started watching some of the Squeak tutorial vids (very early on still on that)

2025-05-13 14:13:36 UTC

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haha, that is serendipity. So that sticky resides with the terminal window? If so, that's so great. I want it system wide on GNOME :)

2025-05-13 13:59:56 UTC

You know what I'd like? I'd like a window control/widget in Linux for ephemeral per-window sticky notes - if I have some long running process in a terminal, and I want to remember when I kicked it off, or maybe I want to copy and save a bit of text from a previous command, or whatever - I'd like to be able to add small annotations to the specific window where the information is pertinent. Available on every window that is open on the system.

2025-05-12 03:08:50 UTC

I think the thing that frustrated me the most watching Inspector Gadget as a kid is that he never put it all together even once.
There must have been others like me waiting for the gadgets to all work, to see peak Inspector.
Why wouldn't they let us have that, for even one lousy episode?

2025-05-08 01:29:55 UTC

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I confess I haven't actually played with kiki yet, but I did poke at the demo site, and I suspect the markup conversion from kiki to Gemtext will be _very_ easy to accomplish - Gemini's markup is dead simple.

2025-05-08 00:00:26 UTC

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You sound like you are describing Gemini in many ways.
For my use cases, gopher is ideal (amateur radio and encryption are problematic). Unencrypted protocols also allow an entire universe of hardware to access information - a gopher client is less than 1000 lines of C.
I also want to do Gemini over packet radio, still working through that.

2025-05-07 22:28:17 UTC

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cgo is actually pretty close to what I need, I'm just looking to see what else is avail. But I could easily make cgo work (just rip out the shell out to less when it grabs a document, and have it directly read and print the temporary file it grabs)
It's here if you are interested: https://github.com/kieselsteini/cgo
I had a funny thought when I git clone'd it - i was like..hasn't been updated in 5 years..and then I was like, oh yeah <shrug>, like that matters haha

2025-05-07 22:07:27 UTC

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I'm going to really double down on finding the gopher client I need to get this on packet - something that is _not_ using curses. "cgo" is 90% there, I just gave it a whirl, and it shells out to use less as a pager for each page, but it's also pure C so easy for me to fix up.
Consider me motivated now :)

2025-05-07 21:05:13 UTC

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Bravo!