Tag: Links

A Nice Radio Programming Program

I recently purchased some handheld radios. Now it is time to program them. The vendor recommends RT Systems, Inc. for the programming software.

So far, the company, website, and program are impressive. There’s a huge list of radio brands their products will program. Their website has how-to videos and nice knowledge base section.

Although I’ll use the software to program the radios now, I’ll still take the time to familiarize myself with how to program them in the field. While listening to an ARRL On the Air podcast, they mentioned the importance of knowing this. Getting it programmed just right, at home, is great. But sometimes I’ll want to change that when I’m not at home. It’s better to know how to do that before I need it.

Time For Me To Get To Work

I write in this blog about different aspects of technology and different ways of looking at how to use technology. I post links to other sites, about technology, which interest me.

Honestly, I could have done that in a diary and skipped the whole process of setting up a website. Using pencil and paper to record thoughts is pretty old technology. It’s definitely stood the test of time.

I started a blog, which has multiple steps, to learn more about how to set up websites in the current year. I’ve decided it’s time to remember that and get back to work.

There’s lots of sources, I think it’s more important to pick one and get started. So I’m going to try Khan Academy. I took a look at their basic courses on websites the other day. It’s under the heading “Computer Programming,” which I didn’t expect. They advocate learning JS before learning HTML and CSS. I didn’t expect that. I’ll start there, and see how it goes.

Cutting Edge Technology, Back In The Day: Slide Rules

I’ve been busy enough the last couple of weeks I’m off my writing schedule. I try to put up one post a week with an interesting technology link.

Today, I’m writing about technology which was revolutionary and cutting edge, but is now seen as obsolete. And that is slide rules.

Slide rules are based on logarithmic scales. They turn multiplication and division into addition and subtraction.

That was the simplest slide rule scales, there were other scales on slide rules too, for different mathematical functions.

The Oughtred Society is a group devoted to slide rules. If you’re interested in slide rules, that site is a good place to start.

(Nope, I still haven’t looked up correct citation rules for online links in an online post.)

Useful Links: Rugged Radios, description of uses of GMRS v BB

I was looking for places to buy portable handheld radios the other day, and stumbled across Rugged Radios.

In addition to their product pages, they have a lot of good information on their site. Here are some useful links I’ve been reading through:

Done for You: Stitch Kitty from Wild Ginger Software

This is an interesting concept, and I hope they do well.

There are several small independent companies making and selling sewing patterns. But a sewing pattern takes more than just templates to use when cutting fabric. There are sewing instructions, sewing diagrams or photos, lists of recommended fabrics, recommended notions, instructions on assembly order, instructions on seam allowances and whether seam allowances are included on the pattern pieces, needle and thread recommendations, stitch setting recommendations, and more.

Stitch Kitty is a (new? relatively new?) program from Wild Ginger software, which helps with all of that. It’s called a “professional guide sheet generator.” I have not heard this term before, not in sewing, and not in any other craft where patterns are sold.

I haven’t bought Stitch Kitty myself and I haven’t tried it. I’ve used sewing patterns in the past, but I’ve never tried to create one myself. I think their sample sheets look nice. I read through the software description. It sounds like Wind Ginger worked very hard to think of every variation a customer creating a sewing pattern might want, but I don’t have enough experience to judge.

I’m back where I started: this is a really interesting concept. I hope they do well.

Useful Sites: Cyclone and Dust Collection Research, courtesy of Bill Pentz

The site: Cyclone and Dust Collection Research. The home page says it was created in 2000 and was last updated in August 2022. That’s an impressive amount of dedication.

I found this through a link from The Wood Database.

Yes, he is advocating for products that he helped design. I’m fine with that, profit is part of what makes the world go round.

Obviously, it’s about dust collection. I’ve only just started reading through the site, but I already found this bit of interesting information: it’s dangerous for a person to vent their dust collection system inside their shop. Very fine dust is what causes a lot of the physical damage and venting a dust collector system inside the shop lets particles too fine for dust filter continue to circulate in the shop. Much better is venting the dust collection system outside.

Mr. Pentz’s biography is quite interesting. At the end he says that his health has finally required him to retire and slow down. I hope his health gets better.

Useful Sites: The Wood Database. Using Wood Is a Technology Too.

The Wood Database is a great source of information about the mechanical properties of different types of wood. It also has many articles about wood. They’ve broken down the articles into the following categories:

  • General Information
  • Identifying Wood
  • Mechanical Properties
  • Separating Specific Woods
  • Health and Safety
  • Reference / For the Shop
  • Working with Wood

Useful Link: Humble Bundle For Good (And Sometimes Unexpected) Deals

I can’t remember how I found Humble Bundle. It’s a really great and thoroughly addictive site. They have bundles of various things such as software, games, and digital books. The prices are usually unbeatable. Part of the price will go to a charity.

There are usually online class bundles for something software related at any given time. They also have many book bundles. I’ve seen book bundles on software, but also on hardware, sewing, outdoors skills, and many other things.

The bundles are limited in time and it’s unpredictable (at least to me) what will show up at any given time.

It’s definitely a good site. No, I’m not compensated by them in any way. I think it’s a good site.

Useful Finds: Taking the time for a class rather than re-inventing the wheel, MS Excel

I generally avoid Microsoft Office if I can. It tries to do too much. And no matter how much I log in and confirm on whichever websites, if I am using Microsoft Office while I’m logged in to Windows on a different email than I bought the Microsoft Office license under, Windows and Microsoft Office throw fits.

Currently, I’m working on a project which needs Excel. I signed up for a couple of Udemy courses. I’m currently working my way through the first one, Unlock Excel VBA and Excel Macros by Lella Gharani. I’m only partway through and I’ve already learned a lot.

Useful Finds: A Bunch of Links About AI and ChatGPT.

Last week I wrote about my skepticism about ChatGPT and Artificial Intelligence. I read and heard multiple further criticisms and critiques of the use of artificial intelligence since then. When I started looking for those links for this post, I found several more.

The Difference Between a Content Creator and Content Editor

In a discussion on the Software Defined Talk podcast episode 400, Matt Ray (one of the hosts) described using ChatGPT to create content. ChatGPT can quickly create a lot of text very quickly, but not all of it is good. It’s not even always factually accurate. Ray pointed out there is a large difference between creating content and editing content created by someone else.

I’d Have Expected the Companies Showcasing These to Understand This and to Have Some Content Editors.

And I would have been wrong to expect that.

As a short recounting of some current events: ChatGPT is launched, gets lots of attention. Microsoft announces it will buy ChatGPT, or its parent company, and ChatGPT will become part of Microsoft’s search engine Bing. Bing gets a tiny fraction of search engine traffic, and search engine advertising dollars, that the Google search engine gets. Cue breathless articles about this being the end of Google’s dominance in internet search. Google announces they have been researching AI themselves for quite a while. Google shows an ad where their own AI answers questions. It gets a question wrong and since this coincides with a massive drop in Google’s stock price, the former is assumed to have caused the latter.

But as The Register explains in “Microsoft’s AI Bing also factually wrong, fabricated text during launch demo” by Katyanna Quach, dated February 14 2023 and last accessed February 14 2023, Microsoft’s search AI demonstration also had factual errors. In some cases, pretty severe errors that in theory would have been easy to spot. It wrongly stated easy-to-look-up facts about product features and bar and restaurant hours and options.

(I’m adding “last accessed” dates for the text articles in this post because some of the articles I’m referencing have revision dates in addition to post dates.)

From Quach’s article:

None of this is surprising. Language models powering the new Bing and Bard are prone to fabricating text that is often false. They learn to generate text by predicting what words should go next given the sentences in an input query with little understanding of the tons of data scraped from the internet ingested during their training. Experts even have a word for it: hallucination.

If Microsoft and Google can’t fix their models’ hallucinations, AI-powered search is not to be trusted no matter how alluring the technology appears to be. Chatbots may be easy and fun to use, but what’s the point if they can’t give users useful, factual information? Automation always promises to reduce human workloads, but current AI is just going to make us work harder to avoid making mistakes.

The Register, “Microsoft’s AI Bing also factually wrong, fabricated text during launch demo” by Katyanna Quach, dated February 14 2023, last accessed February 14 2023,

Why didn’t either Google/Alphabet or Microsoft check the answers the AI gave before their demonstrations? Did they assume the answers would always be correct? Or that the probability of correct responses would be high enough it was worth the risk? Or that everyone would enthralled and not check at all? I have no idea.

Intellectual Property Rights? We Don’t Need No Stinking Intellectual Property Rights! Except For Our Own Intellectual Property. Then, Yes, Please!!

I might make that the subject of a whole other post another day. To put it briefly: Many of these models, language and image, are trained on large amounts of publicly available information. In the free, research, or crowd-sourcing stages, intellectual property rights to the information used for training are often not discussed. Then the model has some success, money gets involved, and those issues become very important.

“Move fast and break things” is similar to “Rules are meant to be broken.” Both statements sounds cool and daring until things of real value are involved, such as money and copyright infringement.

ChatGPT, the Latest Darling, Is Not as Neutral as It Says It Is

Here are a couple of posts from the Substack page Rozado’s Visual Analytics by David Rozado and a referencing post from Reclaim the Net:

To summarize the three posts, when asked if it has a political bias ChatGPT says it does not and claims that as an Ai, it cannot. When asked questions from numerous different tests of political ideology, ChatGPT tested moderate on one and some version of left, left-leaning, or liberal on all the others.

Is it the content ChatGPT is trained on? Was there an inadvertent bias in the people who chose the content? Is “The Political Bias of ChatGPT – Extended Analysis” Rozado explains he first documented a political bias in ChatGPT in early December 2022. ChatGPT went through an update in mid-December 2022, which Rozado said included a mitigation of the political bias in answers. Then after an update in January 2023, the political bias was back.

I’ve chosen not to go through all of Rozado’s posts, but there are quite a few. This is a topic which has a lot more than I’m writing here. I’m pointing out that there’s more to read than I’m referencing here because that’s part of my point: none of this is simple. None of it is the easy replacement of messy human interaction that technology in general and AI in particular is claimed to be.

That Political Bias? Quickly Defeated With the Right Questions.

Zerohedge’s post “Go Woke, Get Broken: ChatGPT Tricked Out Of Far-Left Bias By Alter Ego ‘DAN’ “ written by the eponymous Tyler Durden, dated February 13 2023 and last accessed February 14 2023, is about breaking ChatGPT’s clearly documented political bias.

How is this done? Tell it to pretend it is DAN, Do-Anything-Now, and provide answers to prompts both as itself and as DAN.

The results are surprising, and interesting, and humorous. The Zerohedge post links to entire Reddit discussions about how to break ChatGPT.

No, I haven’t read through all those Reddit discussions, although I probably will at some time in the future. I know I’m beating this drum a lot, but I’ll repeat it again: trying to replace humans with technology, AI or anything else, is not as easy as claimed.

ChatGPT Still Can’t Do Light Verse or Even Romantic Rhymes.

Those endless poems, some banal and some quite good, which start with “Roses Are Red and Violets Are Blue”? ChatGPT is awful at those and at light verse as well.

The Register‘s post “Roses are red, algorithms are blue, here’s a poem I made a machine write for you” by Simon Sharwood, dated February 13 2023, and Quillette‘s post “Whatever Happened to Light Verse?” by Kevin Mims, dated February 2 2023, both last accessed February 14 2023, are both very good