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Hardware Stuff

Fighting Back Against Internet Advertisements

I’m old enough to remember the World Wide Web in its infancy in the early 1990s, when the focus was on information sharing. These days the main aim of the web seems to be to make money by tracking people’s habits and showing them adverts. I missed the old experience, and I wanted some protection […]

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Amateur Radio Hardware

SDR Trouble

One of my colleagues asked me to have a look at receiver that wasn’t behaving well. It was one of the many USB receivers that are around based on the RTL 2832U and Rafael Micro R820T tuner chips. The device was very intermittent, but he wasn’t sure if it was a problem with the hardware, […]

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Hardware

A New Lease of Life

I changed jobs about 18 months ago, and I’m already getting known as ‘that’ guy when it comes to fiddling with technology! So, a colleague turned up at work with a laptop which had been given to him by a family member, after they’d bought a newer machine. He said it was running slowly and […]

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Hardware

The RC2014 Computer

While at Liverpool Makefest last June, I bought myself a kit to build an RC2014 Z80-based computer. The kit was very well made, with high quality circuit boards which accepted solder very easily, along with sufficient documentation to make the whole building process smooth and enjoyable. I found the process quite educational too, as the […]

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Amateur Radio Hardware

SharkRF OpenSpot

I’ve been having a lot of success using my MD380 DMR transceiver together with the Isle of Man’s DMR repeater network. Sadly though, my house isn’t in coverage of the repeaters. This means I can’t use my handheld at home. The solution to this problem has come in the form of a Radio/IP gateway called […]

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Amateur Radio Hardware Isle of Man

The Things are coming…

Recently, I attended #offcamp – a barcamp style discussion around open data which was organised by @bcs_isleofman and free to attend. The morning sessions were OK and it was good to see that some thought is being given to making data open and available, especially data that has been collected by governments and already paid for […]