The End is Near

Every time I see a giant rain cloud blot out the sun, I think it looks like armageddon or something.  Today after I left physics class I saw an enormous dark cloud descending on campus.  It was just made worse by the “calm before the storm” feeling and the odd quite around campus save for some wavering voice singing in long Arabic syllables and unfamiliar tones.  Weird.

Thats my odd story for today.  Later I go to buy new shoes (mine are falling apart and are completely unsuitable for Ultimate) and to show Mike the house for which we just signed the lease, but that hes never seen.

Morse Code Influences on Ham Radio Lingo

I wrote this paper for my linguistics class. Since I did most of my research through the Internet, I thought I should post my paper back to the Internet. I also posted the paper in pdf form here: Morse Code Influences on Ham Radio Lingo

Morse Code Influences on Ham Radio Jargon

The origins of much of today’s ham radio jargon traces back to early codewords and usages of Morse code. Codewords are short sequences that are sent by encoding each character of the word in Morse code, and tapping out that Morse on the radio, just as you would send any other word. To understand the jargon used by amateur radio operators, one must first consider the origins of radio communication. Samuel Morse introduced Morse Code and the telegraph in the 1840’s and 1850’s, and his invention spread rapidly through the states, especially along railroad lines. In 1896 Marconi was the first person to send Morse code by radio waves, and amateur radio was born. By 1912 radiotelegraph had grown enough that Congress begun to regulate the frequencies available to amateur and private stations. These stations all used Morse until voice transmission was made possible in 1920, although Morse was still in common use through the 1950’s…

spring break

heh, last post was “first day of class” and now its already past spring break. Time does fly. The last half-semester has been mostly un-eventful. Mike, Arvind and I found a duplex to live in next year. The rent per person is about $515 a month, which is much higher than this years $300/mo. I’ve been more aware of how i spend my money since i found that out. Oh, speaking of money. I had my check card information stolen. Turns out Bank of America is really quite good at making sure i don’t really loose any money in the long run, and they’ve refunded everything they took. The sucky part was that the guy pulled my account down past a zero balance, and i couldn’t really use my account for a few days until it “posted” and then i could actually make a claim to their “fraudulent losses department” or whatever its called, then that night they refunded my money. i was out of money for about a week, but luckily i could call a few loans from my roommates and get some cash.

My spring break was nice and relaxing. I spent the week playing games and doing a little studying, and hanging out with Elissa a lot. We went to enchanted rock state park on Thursday to get out of the city. I wanted to take elissa camping, since she has never spent the night in a tent or made breakfast on a campfire, but of course the park was all booked up. We had to make do with just a day trip, and by the end of the day we were tired anyways, so it was fine. I couldn’t quite convince elissa to go into the cave, but i did get her to try a little rock climbing. Well, rock jumping really. Unfortunately she can’t quite jump as far as i can, so she took a short fall and I felt terrible X_X (don’t worry, shes fine).

Since my ruby class is gone, (it only lasted half a semester) my most interesting class now is linguistics i think. I mean math and physics are interesting occasionally, but for the most part i don’t care. And the only reason linguistics is fun, is because i chose ham radio lingo as my research topic on my most recent paper (due the day after tomorrow, ack!). Every time i read much about hams, i really want to get a license and become one… but I think its just a passing fancy. I enjoy radio communication, and always have since the day i bought a $20 radio at RadioShack so i could talk to my next door neighbor after our parents had told us to come home for the night, course it really didn’t work well at all, but that didn’t matter. I imagine if I ever decided to use a ham radio, i would want to make one from a kit, and then only operate the CW (morse) modes. Because thats what a Real Man would do. Or maybe write some digital to analog software, or some of my own beam steering stuff. That might be fun.