hobbies – The Zion Chronicle

HAM – KF7DQE

For the last couple of decades I have wanted to get a HAM radio license. I never got really serious about it, but it was always there in the back of my head waiting for “someday.”

Someday finally arrived. The stars aligned a couple of weeks ago and I decided to just go out and do it soon. I discovered that there was a test scheduled monthly in Salt Lake and I decided to study and take the exam during one of the tests this summer. I started studying from a library book – Now Your Talking – on Monday. I already knew that much of the knowledge was common sense rules about being considerate and so yesterday when I looked to see what dates the test was to be administered I discovered that the first one was that evening. Having taken some practice exams and seeing that I almost always got passing scores with the little study I had done, I decided to take the leap and take my test yesterday rather than agonizing over the material for another month. I took the test at 7:00 last night and passed on the first try (you can have three tries in one sitting). They encouraged me to take the test for the General class and I got closer to passing that than I would have expected.

Today my callsign got assigned and published in the FCC database so I am now KF7DQE – a HAM without a radio. (Of course I’ll be on the lookout for an appropriate rig.)

So I could be posting about national news items, but instead I spent my spare time today working on a gardening wiki. Laura wanted to keep notes on the plants that we have planted with some of the more vital statistics such as when to prune them and how well they thrive for us. I decided that a TiddlyWiki was a very good format to keep such notes because these wikis are very portable, the entire site is in a single file, and they allow you to cross reference notes and link between notes so that it becomes a very versatile note-taking system. I have actually started using TiddlyWikis for a variety of note-taking projects at home and at work.

After I got started on the project I thought it would be fun to put it on my website so that I could access it and update it from anywhere. To do that I used MiniTiddlyServer (MTS) which allows makes a server environment for TiddlyWikis. Normally they are displayable on the web but not they can’t be updated online without some help. I think that MTS is the best tool to give that help that I have seen. Admittedly I work with Sean Hess, who created MTS, but even if I didn’t know him I would consider this to be a fine piece of work. The first version of MTS that I used was only 9 files zipped up to less than 100Kb. The version I am using now is much bigger (over 500Kb – still very small) and much more powerful.

This opens up a world of future possibilities. For the present, anyone can see what I am planting in my gardens (flower and vegetable). Later I may choose to allow others to contribute to the wiki by invitation. Eventually I could choose to open parts of it up for general comment and contribution. MTS can do that kind of thing, the question is, “will I want to try it?” The answer is, “time will tell.”