How's that for a half an hour's worth of wspr (only showing my own spots).  Certainly more popular than Opera or Ros.

Here's a screen shot of all stations active at the moment. Busy busy!

I really don'y know why I keep bothering, but every time I see a new Linux distro on offer I can't resist trying it.(Ultimate Edition 3.2 based on Ubunto 11.10)  As usual though, I didn't get very far.  This time I replaced the gaming keyboard (A known problem in the past) with a standard one.  However, didn't do me much good as the Monitor went blank and didn't fire up again during install.  Blast!, another 6 quid down the drain. Won't be any good on the notebook as there are cool desk top options that will require a decent graphics card, which the notebook doesn't have.

Picked up a handy little tool from Maplin today though. Got loads of watches in the drawer, that I have not bothered to get replacement batteries for when they expired.  Usually find a new watch that turns me on my that time Hi!.  Anyway, spotting this tool gave me the idea of replacing said batteries myself.  Murphies law says I only have one suitable watch, ie back twist screws off, which turns out handy as it's the only other watch I really still fancy wearing.  The rest either need jewelers screw drivers or forcing the back off.  I tried that once, but couldn't get the damn thing to snap back on again.

Next time I'm in town I'll pick up a CR 2016 3v. No doubt an extortionate price, as batteries are these days *sigh* but at least I'll save on labour cost Hi!.
 

After all these years of receiving sstv pics, I finally decided to take the plunge and transmit a pic myself.

EA7OU called from Spain earlier so I answered him.  The result is shown below, and I'm chuffed to see my power out of 20 watts doing so well.  I could go higher I guess, but I'd like to keep on the good side of my output trannies Hi!..  Many moons ago my IC-718 went critical on high power, so being a poor pensioner now (spare a copper guv!) I'm not taking any chances Hi!

Don't know why my budgie's head is missing in the returned shot.  It was ok when I sent it ??

Murphies law again, just when I seem to get everything sorted something starts acting up again.

This time it's the upload widget for sstv pics.  keeps freezing.  Had the problem before and had to download a fresh copy.  I'd like to use the sstv prog which is part of the Ham Radio Deluxe suite, but apart from false triggering I notice the last downloaded copy misses incoming pics that mmsstv has no problem with.

I just might call it a day with my online sstv page.  Concentrating more on 'Broadcast' listening/logging lately anyway.  Running RX-SSTV in the background, (Both computers) along with 'Gadwin Printscreen', a screenshot grabber, which allows me to send the latest pics from either 27 or 14 Mhz to cqChat, along with any other reports anyway.

I awoke at 03:00 this morning, so fired up the Roberts that I keep by the bed.  Logged a new station for me called Laser Hot Hits (4014 Khz).  The Kinks, among others, kept me entertained until I nodded off again.

The notebook is still running the PCR-1000, via Ham Radio Deluxe.  However, as the sound is directly from the rig to a pair of amplified speakers, and not to the notebook sound card, it leaves the latter open to connection with the Satellit 750.  Thus feeding any possible 27 Mhz sstv to a minimised RX-SSTV.

G'Day! Mmmmm, a bit chilly this morning.

Just had a quick look at opera, but doesn't seem to be too many into it at the moment.  Wonder if the initial interest has started to wain a bit.  Look at the difference in usage compared with WSPR for instance.  Here are a couple of screen shots, and look where my signal is reaching over the last quarter hour on WSPR.  I was only received by one station on Opera, and that was in Europe.

Finally collected my Sony 32 inch tele from Dover yesterday (An inehritance from my Mother who passed away a year ago now) Unfortunately I've had to wait all this time due to the police retaining it as evidence against the toe rag who had burgled my mum's house whilst she was dying in hospital.  Cleaned off all the residue finger print powder and set it up.  The remote was never recovered, so I used the onboard controls.  Works a treat, and replaces my 21 inch Tesco job.  I'm sorting out a new universal remote today....I hope!.

The old tele is now connected to this computer, which replaces the 14 inch monitor.  Stone me! what a difference.  Given the computer a whole new lease of life.  Screen is obvilously back lit now and really has brought the pc progs to life.  SBS1 looks brilliant now, MMSSTV too.  Of course I'm only viewing form a couple of feet, so the screen looks huge.

Overall, really chuffed with both new arrangements.  Just need the new remote, which I'll sort today.

I'm not sure whether I'll link to the weather page yet.  I'll wait a few days until the data sorts itself out prediction wise, then figure where to link from.  Unfortunately I'm not able to edit my main page, that's kind of marooned out there. The weather page was made with a different editor and placed on an alternative server, effectively meaning I can edit it  down the normal ftp route. The weather link would have to be  from either this Blog or the last 24 sstv pics page.

I had a play with the weather software provided with the Oregon kit, but soon found it was only a live version.  This meant I could not collect data and view graphs/records etc unless I paid for an upgrade.  I'm not about to do that due to my aversion to passing bank account detils over the web, so today I downloaded a fresh version of 'Cumulus'. 

I now have that program running on the notebook, and have also managed to upload data to my old weather page.  It will take a few days to settle down, as the pressure data hasn't had time to reach prediction capability.

The note book is a bit of a pain, as the full software screen will not fit. I have to either reach a balance or chop a bit off the bottom due to scrolling.. Here are a couple of screen shots anyway.  (My choice of colouring)

Due to my weather centre (Maplin job) going completely strupid recently, I decided to bin it.  Today I treated myself to a new centre.  This one is called the Oregon WMR88 from 'Nauticalia'.

I've set the thing up now, and all seems to be working ok.  Here is a screen shot of the software, which being basically a free version, does not have any online features.  If I go down that route again I'll do it via 'Cumulus' software, as used successfully with the last station.