Today I got my amateur radio Technician License.¹ 🎉

The technician license is the entry level license; there are two other license levels higher than it: general and amateur extra.²

Because my license is entry level license, I’ve only got a limited set of permitted frequencies I can use. I think I’ll start studying for the general to expand upon that.

I’ve started my search to look for my first radio. I didn’t do any research ahead of time, but luckily there’s articles and groups online that have thoughts (totally open to thoughts).

I won’t be able to transmit until the FCC officially recognizes my achievement and assigns me a callsign. That’s supposed to happen by Tuesday or Friday of next week. We’ll see how long that takes.³

So, yeah. This is fun. We’ll see where this takes me.

Recently I’ve started reading a lot of books on Audible¹. I wanted a way to briefly list my thoughts about the books and never really caught onto Goodreads.

So I made my own - Books.

It’s short, it’s simple. There’s emoji responses and short thoughts.

I thought it’d be fun to take a live photo and make it a nice video for my about page. There’s not really any images of me on here and I always like it when someones site has at least one picture of them. It’s nice to see what people look like.

I used Lively on iOS to export a movie from a live photo.

From there, I used FFmpeg to crop the video and remove the audio.¹

I think the result is nice. I might rotate out the video periodically just to make things exciting.

Update: Now with LivePhotosKit JS it’s legit!

I had a fun week last week.

On Tuesday, I met up with Yasmine Evjen and Russell Ivanovic of Relay FM’s Material podcast.

It was fun to meet the people behind one of my favorite podcasts, even if I was a little awkward.¹ I wish we could have chatted longer, but I’m glad that I got to meet them. Plus they had a busy week ahead!²

I can’t wait to go to RelayCon during WWDC and meet other Relay podcasters.

Yesterday, Ryan and I went out to the San Mateo Maker Faire. I’m not sure if it’s the San Mateo faire or just the Bay Area. I’ve heard it both ways.

When I was at Georgia Tech, there was a Mini Maker Faire³ and that was a lot of fun to visit. I learned how to pick a lock there.

I’ve always heard as the Bay Area Maker Faire as the Maker Faire. It was a required pilgrimage.

For me, I finally got see a lot of things I’ve just read about. I finally got to see the cupcake cars (so cute!) and the life size Mousetrap in action. The sander races with the stuffed horses were hilarious!⁴

Best of all I got to meet BB-8!

Even though we only went for a day, it was a lot of fun and I’d suggest that anyone should visit. There’s a lot of interesting people and creations at the Maker Faire and I’m sure there’s something for everyone.

I love listening to podcasts. I listen to them on my way to and from work. There’s always an interesting topic or conversation in my collection of podcasts. I thought I’d go over all the podcasts I listen to and list my favorites.

My podcast client of choice is Overcast. I use Smart Speed and the general speed increase heavily. Most podcasts I listen to have Smart Speed on and are sped up ~1.6x on top of that.¹

After going through Overcast, the total count of podcasts I’m subscribed to comes to 66. 😳

I knew it was high, but that’s a lot.

Without further ado, here are the podcasts I listen to:

• The Awkward Human Survival Guide
• Canvas
• Connected
• Cortex
• Good Job, Brain!
• Mac Power Users
• The Rebound
• Remaster
• Ruminate Podcasts
• Serial
• Still Untitled: The Adam Savage Project
• Stuff You Should Know
• Welcome to Night Vale
• 99% Invisible
• Accidental Tech Podcast
• The Allusionist
• Analog(ue)
• Anecdote Podcast
• Awesome Etiquette
• B-Sides
• Back to Work
• Built in Motion - Life and Engineering
• Causality
• Clockwise
• Core Intuition
• Criminal
• Everything Sounds
• Geek Fit
• Getting There
• The Heart
• Hello Internet
• Inquisitive
• Iterate
• The Journal by Kevin Rose
• LGBTQ Tech Podcast
• Liftoff
• Material
• Myke at the Movies
• Pitch
• Radio Diaries
• Reconcilable Differences
• Refresh
• Robot or Not?
• Sextless Marriage
• Song Exploder
• Surprisingly Awesome
• The Talk Show With John Gruber
• Technical Difficulties
• Techtonic²
• The Tesla Show
• The Tinycast
• Top Four
• The Truth
• Tuner
• Turing-Incomplete
• Under the Radar
• Upgrade
• V3
• Welcome to Macintosh
• What I Watched Last Night
• Your Daily Lex

Here are also podcasts that I’m trying out, i.e. downloaded an episode but not subscribed:

• Millennial
• Open Ended
• The Titanium Physicists Podcasts
• The Uncertain Hour

After listing all of those, I’m out of breath. 😅

Some of them are no longer publishing, e.g. Inquisitive³. Others haven’t published in a few months or longer, but haven’t been declared dead.

My top four⁴ podcasts would probably have to be:

1. Good Job, Brain!
2. 99% Invisible
3. Back to Work
4. Stuff You Should Know

Good Job, Brain! is my favorite because Ryan and I listen to it while making dinner on Friday nights. It’s fun, hilarious, and full of facts. We even own the barnyard buzzers they use now.

99% Invisible is a great podcast about all sorts of things. Sometimes it’s a building that has a backstory that no one knows about or a thing that people see everyday, but don’t think about. The show is very well produced and just awesome.

Back to Work is hosted by Merlin Mann and Dan Benjamin where they talk about all sorts of things. Productivity and communication are listed as the top two things they talk about in the description, but they talk about those and more. I’m never really sure what to expect from it, but I always enjoy the show.

Stuff You Should Know is another show about facts and diving into things you probably didn’t know (heh).⁵ It’s a great show made in Atlanta with hosts that are not afraid to chuckle.

Other good podcasts include:

• Awesome Etiquette
• Material
• Liftoff
• Hello Internet

If any of those eight have a new episode, I’ll generally listen to those first before getting to the rest.

I suggest you download at least one episode of those eight and give it a shot. You never know, you might end up subscribing.