My attendance streak got broken last year since I couldn’t make it (just too many things going on), so it will be good to get back this year. It’s always a great place to learn about what’s going on, learn something new, and of course get together with friends.
Unlike previous years where I drove up the day before, this year I’ll be leaving bright and early on Friday so that I can get to Charlotte around 0900ish. If anybody from the Charleston or Columbia area wants to carpool with me, drop me a line.
Another Barcamp Charleston is over with. The seventh Barcamp Charleston was a lot of fun. Significantly smaller than previous barcamps, but still a good time. There were also fewer presentations pitched this year as a result, but there were some pretty good ones.
After the pitch sessions, I started the morning off hanging out with people in a BoF (Birds of a Feather) session. After that was my first presentation that I called Charleston Area Amateur Radio. Had a fairly decent sized group come to my talk where I talked a bit about the ham radio clubs in the area and the repeater networks around here that are available for use.
My session ended a bit early, and I was able to catch the Palmetto Scholars Academy kids working on their high altitude balloon launch demonstration. Their balloon didn’t go all that high, but they did a good job of explaining and demonstrating the process and requirements behind launching high altitude balloons.
After the group photo and lunch was a session on graphs and graph theory by Denise Gosnell, one of the data scientists at Pokitdoc. Neat stuff. Kudos to Pokitdoc for being BarcampCHS sponsors and sending a great group of people to give some great presentations.
My second presentation of the day was a simple Ask a Medical Physicist session. Much to my surprise, I actually had a few (3) people show up, so it was just a very informal Q&A session where I gave a brief description of some of the things medical physicists do and answered any questions they had. It turned out to be a pretty decent session from my perspective.
The last two sessions I went to were on JSON and Clojure. They were both good sessions and I learned enough to dig a little more into them.
The crowd at this year’s Barcamp Charleston was a lot smaller than previous years, but there were a lot of new faces there. Hopefully they’ll spread the word and bring friends next year.
I’ve had one of these Star Trek door chime panels hanging up on the wall for quite a while now.
It’s pretty cool, although rather limited. The button on the front plays the Star Trek communicator panel sound. When motion sensors on the side are triggered, the panel can play the door swooshing sound, a red alert klaxon sound or no sound (determined by the sliding switch on the front).
Over the weekend, the thought popped into my head that I should get a second one and modify it to also function as a wireless intercom system. Push the button, it plays the communicator panel sound and activates the intercom. Add a microphone behind the speaker grill and some LEDs to light up the white indicator box when the intercom is active. How cool would that be?
I’ve been pondering ways to do this. Cannibalizing an old intercom system or maybe even a couple of FRS radios should be a relatively easy turnkey solution. Something Arduino based using a Pro Mini or Pro Micro with some kind of low power FM transmitter might work too, but require considerably more effort to develop. I haven’t opened mine up so I don’t know how much room there is to cram stuff into.
I’ll let it spin around in my head for a while, maybe hit a couple of thrift stores to see if there’s anything interesting to work with. With the move coming up, it will probably be a while before I have much time to work on this.
While Dragoncon was another great time, unfortunately this was also the first year I managed to pick up a cold (con-crud) while there, which was not so great. I missed out on the Saturday evening festivities but was feeling well enough to head back out on Sunday.
This year’s Dragoncon was (aside from getting sick) a different experience from the previous years. It was less about seeing the people in costumes and attending panels/sessions, and more about getting together with con-friends that I’d met previously and hanging out with them. The costumes were great, and watching them go by was pretty cool, but they weren’t the main focus for me this year as they were in the past.
Hung out with some old Dragoncon friends
and met some new ones
This was also the first year I got to stay in one of the host hotels (the Hyatt). Luckily, our room faced the street and offered a great view of the Saturday Dragoncon parade from the 12th floor.
Dragoncon parade view
Nichelle Nichols, Dragoncon parade star
After one of the Space track talks, I stopped by the solar astronomy setup at the Hilton to check things out. It was operated by the Charles Bates Solar Astronomy Project, and they had a pretty nice setup with 4 scopes each with a different filter. One of the things they do is bring solar viewing to schools, which I think is great.
Solar astronomy
Could be a while before I make it to another Dragoncon. The next year will be pretty busy, so I doubt I’ll make it to another Dragoncon until 2017 at the earliest. It will be good to get back when I do make it though.
We were out in Orlando for the weekend (more about that later) and as luck would have it, were able to find a spot to watch the SpaceX Dragon launch (CRS-7) off US-528 a few miles from the launch site. This was the first rocket launch I’ve seen in person and “up close”, so I was pretty excited. There were a fair number of people gathered at the same spot to see the launch too, but it wasn’t super crowded fortunately. The mid-morning launch also meant the sun was hot, but not unbearably so. I even had a random eyeball QSO with another ham who spotted me tuning around on my HT listening for any launch related radio chatter.
Managed to get some pretty decent pictures of the launch and the rocket ascending with my SLR and 300mm lens. The images are cropped in from the original with some histogram enhancement applied.
Launch time!
About 20 seconds or so after the launch, the loud rumbling sound of the rocket firing reached us.
This was the last photo I took of the rocket before it disappeared behind the cloud. Not long after this shot, Connie told me the rocket had blown up.
The crowd starting to leave the observing site after the launch.
It was a very exciting first launch experience, although hearing about the rocket failure was very disappointing. I’m glad Connie found us a good spot to catch the launch from.
