Communicating in a networked world
When you’re preparing for an online interview (Zoom, Skype), there are a few things you can do to really help it be a truly professional shoot. These tips are for both the interviewer and the interviewee. And they are the tips I suggest to interviewees on the Exploring Leadership podcast.
In amateur radio circles there’s much use of digital modes to exchange information. (In olden days it was almost exclusively limited to “chatting” on the air.) At least in the circles I’m running in these days this is true. “Packet radio” involves putting a computer on the front end, which then controls the radio, connecting to other packet radio stations and transferring messages digitally. At the lowest level the software has a command-line interface (accessed via radio), and at its highest level, it is basically supporting programs that exchange email (again, by radio, not thru the Internet).
Later articles:
° Packet and SFWEM Interconnects
° Visualizing Packet Traffic
My packet radio station operates on 145.07 or 145.09 mHz (also known as “2 meters” and mail is exchanged by “connecting to” AA6AX-1 via that radio. If you need to email me about this, please use the email address packet@aa6ax.us.
The station uses a Raspberry Pi 4 as the computer, and I use VNC to view the virtual “screen” of the RasPi and interact with the system. The radio is a cheap 2-meter transceiver, and a circuit board in a box called a “TNC” attaches to the computer and controls the radio. The photo shows the RasPi (about 4 inches wide) on top of the slightly-larger TNC. Plug it all into electrical power, add a radio with an antenna, and it’s on the air.
Read more about this packet radio setup in the PDF file.
This diagram shows the components of the packet station. Most notable are the Raspberry Pi computer (the “RasPi”), with the reddish TNC-Pi on the top, connecting it to the radio. The radio has an antenna, and is connected to a power source.
The computer itself is on the local network, and the VNC software lets me view its “screen” on my own computer, and use my mouse and keyboard as if they were directly connected to the RasPi computer. It’s kind of a virtual computer.
When I was an undergrad in college I helped start a few small companies. Some my own, and some other people’s. One of those other people was a guy who among his exploits used to buy up after-midnight time on cable TV (in Chicago) and then fill up that time with what he called “music video.” This was around 1968. (MTV wasn’t launched until 1981!) And I swear he actually called it music video, though Wikipedia disagrees with me. They played short video clips created by bands to promote their records. Remember that people made money by selling records and airplay on radio, so the goals wasn’t to play the video, but rather to drive the sales of records.
It has taken all those years for me to get around to not only making video but setting things to my own music. And here are the results. [Read more…]
Indulgence is a 20-minute indie film by producer Leo Maselli. It’s one of the segments of a compilation film CA Shorts, all of which are being shot in 2019, and it will be released in 2020.
The team completed the shooting of Indulgence early in 2019 (after postponement due to too much smoke in the air late in 2018). This week I saw the first rough cut of the film. I already wrote most of the music for Indulgence, and the next task is to cut-to-fit and add incidental music for this segment.
As part of the promotion and documentation of how we made the film, Erik Parker interviewed me about the creation of the music for Indulgence. Without comment, here’s that interview that he and cameraman Jason Fassler captured.
A Sonic Indulgence from Erik C. Parker on Vimeo.
Yesterday I had to answer my phone.
Does that sound odd? First of all, what’s a phone for if you don’t answer it? But second, who answers the phone any more, given the overwhelming volume of spam calls we receive every day?
You’re probably thinking “Why is he even asking this? When was the last time I answered a phone call?”