The Ek’s Files

If you want a great book for learning HTML, XHTML, and CSS, I highly recommend Head First HTML by Elisabeth Freeman and Eric Freeman–it’s an easy read that’s packed with examples and exercises. It won’t make you an expert, but it’ll arm you with the basic tools and understanding you need to create decent web pages that are easy to maintain. I haven’t finished my web make-over yet, but I’ll let you know when the new pages are up.

I’m dorking around with a new look for my web site (no, it’s not up on my site yet). I wanted to create a GIF with a transparent background. You can use tools like Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro to do such things, or you can use a free online GIF editor at http://www.gifworks.com/. It’s free and does many things besides help you make the background of a GIF transparent. You just upload your file, use the editor to do what you need, and then do a right-click save back to your hard drive. You can also save via FTP, although I never tried that.

I have a couple of things on the workbench right now (at least mentally, if not physically). First, since so many of you like to use my digital setting circles project with your Palm OS PDA, I’m investigating how to make my Palm T|X (with the Palm Multi-connector) work with either my digital setting circles or my serial sender (part of the GOLog project). I found some connectors for the T|X at www.gomadic.com, but my interface circuits require some modification to work with the T|X (because the T|X uses 3.3V TTL-like signals for serial communications, but my interface circuits use 5V). Stay tuned–I’ll let you know how it turns out.

I’m also working on a new vertical HF antenna for the ham shack. Hopefully, it’ll cover 10, 15, 20, and 40 meters and be less than 13 feet tall. I’m investigating using coax traps for 10, 15, and 20, and maybe a linear loading scheme for 40. It’s kinda slow going on this one, but stay tuned if you’re interested.

Don’t forget, you can subscribe to my blog’s RSS feed at http://blog.eksfiles.net/?feed=rss2. This’ll make it easy to find out when I post about any progress on these projects.

After reading so much about blogs and bloggers over the past couple of years, I’m still trying to figure out what all the hoopla is about. Bloggers, and people who read blogs, seem to me to be waaaaaay overestimating their importance to society. Maybe it’s just me; I generally don’t give much of a crap about what most other people think–I figure that my opinion’s as good as anyone else’s. Maybe that’s why I skip the editorial page in the newspaper, too (although I usually read the letters to the editor on the outside chance that one of them might provide a good chuckle).

Yet here I am, the proud owner of a blog of my very own. Go figure.

In my own defense, the blog attracts me because it looks like an easy way to share interesting information. Being the ham radio, amateur astronomy, computer, and electronics nerd that I am (see my digital setting circles project, for example), I’m frequently thinking about some idea for an interesting project. And once in a while I learn something new that I think might be interesting to other nerds like me. So now I have a place to put that kind of stuff easily, at least until it’s time to put that stuff on one of my other pages.

That’s not to say that I won’t ever use this blog to rant or rave about something. But I don’t expect you to care about what I have to say. So feel free not to.

There you have it. This is my blog. I’ll be a little surprised if anyone ever finds it.