All articles that do not qualify as “projects” were moved here. Blog should be a section that will contain only a sequence of articles similar to a diary: musings on various subjects not related to a specific “mainstream” project but mostly a collection of day to day topics that cross my mind or things that I do.
It came to my mailbox today: my new toy, a Panasonic HC-VXF1 camcorder. Many of you might wonder why — in the age of DJI and GoPro mini cameras — would anyone buy a camcorder. True, these seem to be quite obsolete, old-fashioned technology in the age of 4 and 8k (and beyond) and mind-boggling […]
Last night it started snowing. For the last five years, we barely saw any snow in the city. When I was a kid, like half a century ago, there were winters when one could barely get out from the house without a shovel. Not anymore. We managed to f…k the nature. We enjoyed a walk […]
After quite some time when this space was in a mess, today I took almost a quantum leap: organizing everything and make it ready for my next projects was not an easy job. I miss building stuff and this space is perfect for such things. Some of my favourite tools are in the picture: the […]
After procrastinating for at least five or six years, I decided to give a chance and refresh this website wordpress theme. To be honest, I was very lazy and I had absolutely no desire to start building from scratch an entire new wordpress theme. I know what a pain this is, mostly for the syling […]
This year reading challenge was short of three books. My resolution was to read 40. This is the list and the links on goodreads.com: Nikolai Gogol [27-28 decembrie, 2023) E.T.A. Hoffmann (20-21 noiembrie, 2023) Charlotte Brontë (15-19 noiembrie, 2023) Anaïs Nin (21 august, 2023) Ian Stewart (4-10 august, 2023) George Orwell (3 august, 2023) Daphne […]
I got COVID, again. Actually WE got COVID again, i.e. my wife and me. But it seems that the natural immunity kicks in much better now than two years ago because the symptoms are the same but shorter in duration. So… plenty of hot tea, paracetamol when needed, and a lot of rest and Hallmark […]
I wrote a list of things I want to finish this year. There are mostly various repairs and small fixes around the house; but there are also some other things like reading a certain book, or a certain number of books, or putting down, on a piece of paper, some resolutions for 2024. 2023 was […]
I got a new Kindle !!! A seven inch Oasis, the latest and greatest from Amazon. After seven years, my previous Kindle developed some battery issues and is becoming more and more unreliable. So I took the opportunity of one of my friends travel to US and I ordered a new one. As I mentioned […]
Greetings ! I completely neglected this website for a considerable amount of time. Simply I didn’t have either time or desire to write anything here. With this coming spring in 2023, with all this war and madness around us, I dug out my older passions, let them see the light again, made more time for […]
Winter is finally here and the weather is suddenly much colder. I bought two styrofoam boxes, the types used for carrying fish, and I made two shelters for the stray cats. Hope will be warm and cosy. It just struck me that this is the 100 post I published on this blog. Nice. I have […]
My new iPhone X is beautiful, a bit too expensive for what it offers but… what the heck. It’s a nice toy. Fancy one. Yet, something annoys me each time I sync my phone with the iTunes. I do this mostly for syncing music from my library. Each time I press the sync button, a […]
Over the past seven years (the age of this blog) I started writing several articles that I never finished. It’s time to trash them completely or just add them to a list for future afterthoughts. Who knows ? So, from older to newer: “Weller WD 1000 M Review – Part III – Software”, January 18, 2013 — […]
This old reel-to-reel was the joy of my teenager days, Back in eighties I was listening to VOA and Radio Kuweit and I was recording mostly on east-german OR-WO tapes (that were quite decent) because the BASF and Agfa were in shortage. Western music reached the black market usually by pilots that were operating civil […]
Today: I am cleaning my old and very dirty Panasonic corded phone. I kept this relic because, being powered from the provider, it does not need batteries and it very reliable. I also own an older rotary phone (kept for the very same reasons).
My friends from YO5KUC Ham Radio Club embarked on a very ambitious project: they want to participate in the Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) program. Now, for those of you that are not familiar with ARISS, this is a awesome educational project run by NASA: “ARISS lets students worldwide experience the excitement of […]
I bought my first Kindle in 2012. Since then, I read more than 400 ebooks. Not too much, not too few, but certainly a lot more than I would have read without the opportunity to carry a whole library with me at all time. Although a great device, my Kindle Keyboard v3.0 was a bit […]
My old Mac died in a very unfortunate way — the GPU of my previous Mac succombed. It was the last model with DVD drive provided and I really miss having the possiblity to play CDs. Anyway… I did some due dilligence about the costs of repair and the figure was higher that what I […]
For starters, I have to be very clear that I have absolutely no affiliation with this company or another of its kind. This is just about a personal opinion and I wanted to write such posts for some time, but did not find enough momentum to do it. While browsing for some information from their […]
Again, this time of the year. Got this beautiful fountain pen from my wife. 🙂
Today, while I went over all my posts, I noticed that I have a large list of 43 draft posts. These are articles that I started writing, thought to be interesting, but I had limited bandwidth to finish. I need some planning with these, thus I put them down, maybe getting some input from you […]
I took a break for almost two months and it was so good ! Away from any disturbance, just us, the Sea and some books. The first couple of weeks slipped away almost unnoticed. There’s something special about Mediterranean… exerts an irresistible charm. Laying on that sea’s shore I can just close my eyes and […]
Ok. Today was THE mail day. I’ve received both my electronic parts orders, the one from RF Parts and the one from DigiKey, that I placed several weeks ago (but had some issues with a couple of backordered items). Ta–Da ! This is it: A lot of bags and goodies. Not to mention the pleasure of sorting […]
I was looking for a RF power module for my APRS beacon project and stumbled upon RF Parts. They are somehow of a niche–oriented online electronic part retailers, specialised on RF and — it seems — mostly on Ham Radio RF parts. I placed my order for two Mitsubishi power RF MOSFET Amplifier Modules and the package […]
This will be a very short post. And only for the blog. I have a sweet spot (call it idiosyncrasy) for stationery. I mean, some people do heroin, some do alcohol, some do Oprah. I am addicted to stationery. Put me in a stationery shop — you can leave me there all day (give or take), […]
I could hardly describe the pleasure of finding my mailbox full of magazines, brochures and thick envelopes. It’s psychological mojo probably goes back in my childhood days, when I was expecting my Topolino subscription, a magazine that my mother managed to get for me with some crazy efforts and connections. For those of you who do […]
Mailbag today. Guess my surprise when I found this in my mailbox: It’s always nice to receive snail mail. Paper mail. Envelopes, magazines and newspapers. That’s why I try to subscribe to receive printed editions of all magazines of interest for me. Some time ago I signed a promo email from Texas Instruments in cooperation […]
Back from a long vacation. Then I resumed my office work. A lot of things to do so I neglected this blog for a while. 2013 went in smoke. Not a very nice year, but not too tough either. However, one year I was not very fond of. I am looking back to some stakes […]
I added a new category/ topic on this blog because last week I successfully passed my Ham Radio certification ! This is something I wanted to do for a long time but had not much time to study and prepare for the exam. One of my relatives was a long time experienced class I Ham […]
I’ve been quite busy the past few weeks doing improvements to this blog. I have used the twenty-ten WordPress theme that I was never very happy with. Not a big deal, anyway. The content is much more important. But the biggest complaint that I had was with an endless list of plugins that I installed […]
I love fridge magnets. We love fridge magnets (my wife likes them too). This is how our fridge looks like: But we also love beer. And we have a large collection of beer bottle caps and coasters. So I thought to combine these and make the caps stick to the refrigerator. Now, what you need […]
