Earthquake predicted for last week of September

Today I heard about a large earthquake (‘aftershock’?) predicted for Christchurch on September 28th, which is just over a week away, so I thought I’d sniff around the internet to try to learn more.

• Steve Graham’s blog makes mention of it as a christian prophecy.
• Radio New Zealand had a news report Quake prediction leaflet could cause alarm – police.
• Ken Ring predicts that 23rd-28th September 2011 are dates for possible increases in seismic action.
• Youtube video Major Earthquake Warning :September 25-27 2011.
• Youtube video ELEnin Dwarf Star Warning September 26, 2011.
• Youtube video Elenin Update July 2011 (Russian reports warn Comet Elenin under intelligent control).
• Youtube video Comet Elenin – companion objects.
• Plus many more Youtube videos.

My thoughts? Hmmmm, seems that a variety of sources are saying similar things. But as usual with anything on the internet, your mileage may vary.

Personally I find Twitter to be the best source of immediate information about New Zealand earthquakes if you search for the #eqnz hashtag.

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21 Sep 2011 update

A comment on this blog suggested looking at Astroblog’s blog which proved to have many interesting details about recent Christchurch earthquakes. (Thanks for the tip)

Tamzin Kay (‘Spaaceweather’) has a very interesting Twitter account and associated blog which are well worth reading to gain more insight into recent Canterbury earthquakes and their triggers.

The APRS frequency Fiasco

Back in 2009 when there were still a lot of AX.25 digipeaters on 144.650 MHz, APRS was becoming very popular and packet BBS activity had declined to such low levels that many areas had dismantled BBS stations. It therefore seemed logical to retain the AX.25 digipeater network on 144.650 and use it for the new APRS activity due to the decline of BBS, DX Cluster and TCP/IP and any other activities.

Earlier, when there had been significant BBS traffic on 144.650, some APRS activity had begun on the then newly-assigned 144.575 channel but most continued quite happily on 144.650 as they saw no advantage to change and were unwilling to go through the financial and red tape hassles for no logical benefit.

FMTAG Form 10 applications for ‘APRS digipeaters’ on 144.650 were stalled by NZART Council. In my opinion, these applications might have had success if they were called ‘digipeaters’ or ‘AX.25 digipeaters’ without specifying which particular AX.25 software was going to be using them.

Council asked Councillor Noel Rowe ZL3GR to prepare a report on the issue of APRS sharing other AX.25 traffic on digipeaters, and this report was no doubt very influential on Council’s decision to force virtually all AX.25 digipeaters on 144.650 to move to 144.575 with all the expenses, site visits and paperwork involved.

Although it is all spilt mik under the bridge, the fact remains that this fiasco would never had happened if NZART operated in an open and transparent manner. Why? Because ZL3GR’s report was never made available at the time by Council for members to scrutinise and comment on.

Attempts to obtain a copy of this important and far reaching report have had no success so far. See Section 8.4 of the NZART Constitution.

The ‘ZK’ AREC callsign fiasco might be another one, along with Councillor ZL2HD’s behaviour, subsequent Lawyer’s Letter and vote of no confidence.

How many other fiascos have there been? How many more will we have to put up with? How many members walk away in disgust per fiasco?

Only a radical switch to accountable, open and transparent governance can cure this fatal flaw. But how can this be accomplished? In spite of some election promises, there appears to be no will inside Council to implement this, only stubborn adherence to the failed and obsolete Secret Squirrel doctrine.

Governance

Inspired by my wife Ann ZL3TNT’s new blog I thought that I should put pen to paper here (OK OK keep your hair on, fingers to keyboard) as I’ve been very concerned about the governance of NZART for some time, highlighted by the Secret Squirrel behaviour I have become aware of in recent years.

There needs to be a radical shift from the current closed door mushroom behaviour to open, transparent and accountable governance.

The question is how can this be achieved?

There has been no indication of any progress in this direction by the existing council, in spite of election pledges by some which no doubt scored a large number of votes for them, including mine.

Further references:
• Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative An Introduction to Openness and Access to Information handbook.
• NZ Parliament Openness and transparency in Government Speech.
• Wikipedia Age of Enlightenment page.
• Wikipedia Open Government page.
• Yes Minister, Series 1 Episode 1, ‘Open Government’, Pt 1, Pt 2, Pt 3.

Wheelclamping

Wheelclamping was a topic of this evening’s Target programme on TV. Someone had removed his wheel with the clamp still attached, taken them home, removed the clamp without damaging it and had hassles from the clamping company. The end result was that clampees were advised to remove the clamps if possible, and to fight the clampers in court.

As my interest was aroused, I began googling and found some Youtube videos showing techniques such as dismantling, angle grinder, boltcutters, forklift, boltcutters again, angle grinder again, clamp the clampers. hmmm isn’t Youtube such fun!

This website has some good stuff too.

Collinear aerials

Over the years I’ve been seeing the occasional reference to collinear VHF and UHF aerials and a couple of decades ago even assembled one but ran out of time to actually use it very much. Nowadays I can see that one for PRS could be quite useful in enhancing the usefulness of the cheap and readily available PRS radios. Some googling uncovered some interesting websites, one in particular describing the author’s research and links to websites such as this one he had found useful, so it might be a good starting point for my own research.

Passwords

Just had a fascinating read of an article about passwords which looked at usability versus complexity and concluded that a password made from three unrelated words strung together was far easier to use than a random collection of characters and numbers and yet could have superior resistance to hacking.

How I’d Hack Your Weak Passwords is also worth reading.

Backing-up computer data

One of the things that really surprised me about the February 22nd Christchurch earthquake was hearing that some businesses had not bothered to take the simple and cheap step of  backing-up their data offsite. Their only data was sitting on a computer or server, either crushed under rubble or inaccessible behind security cordons. What was the data? Speadsheets, MYOB files, Addressbooks, Payroll records, Tax files, you name it – all totally unusable.

I thought about my own rather haphazard backups too.

After some experimentation I came up with the bach file cut-and-pasted below, which lives on a USB memory stick and backs up my data onto the stick with the minimum of fuss.

————————————————————————————–

@echo off

REM By David Fraser. Released 7th April 2011. Email address: zl3ai@qsl.net
REM Put this batch file on the removable drive that you wish to back up data onto.

REM Define which files are to be backed up, and where they will be copied to.
set BackupSource=C:\Documents and Settings\*.*
set BackupDestination=Backup files

REM Display source and destination so user can confirm.
echo      Source: %BackupSource%
echo Destination: %BackupDestination%
echo.
echo Press Ctrl-C to abort, or
pause
echo.
echo Please wait . . .

REM Use XCOPY to do the actual copying of files.
xcopy /D /E /I /Y “%BackupSource%” “%BackupDestination%”

REM Here is some documentation for XCOPY if you wish to customise the command line.
REM
REM Copies files and directory trees.
REM
REM XCOPY source [destination] [/A | /M] [/D[:date]] [/P] [/S [/E]] [/V] [/W]
REM                           [/C] [/I] [/Q] [/F] [/L] [/G] [/H] [/R] [/T] [/U]
REM                           [/K] [/N] [/O] [/X] [/Y] [/-Y] [/Z]
REM                           [/EXCLUDE:file1[+file2][+file3]…]
REM
REM  source       Specifies the file(s) to copy.
REM  destination  Specifies the location and/or name of new files.
REM  /A           Copies only files with the archive attribute set,
REM               doesn’t change the attribute.
REM  /M           Copies only files with the archive attribute set,
REM               turns off the archive attribute.
REM  /D:m-d-y     Copies files changed on or after the specified date.
REM               If no date is given, copies only those files whose
REM               source time is newer than the destination time.
REM  /EXCLUDE:file1[+file2][+file3]…
REM               Specifies a list of files containing strings.  Each string
REM               should be in a separate line in the files.  When any of the
REM               strings match any part of the absolute path of the file to be
REM               copied, that file will be excluded from being copied.  For
REM               example, specifying a string like \obj\ or .obj will exclude
REM               all files underneath the directory obj or all files with the
REM               .obj extension respectively.
REM  /P           Prompts you before creating each destination file.
REM  /S           Copies directories and subdirectories except empty ones.
REM  /E           Copies directories and subdirectories, including empty ones.
REM               Same as /S /E. May be used to modify /T.
REM  /V           Verifies each new file.
REM  /W           Prompts you to press a key before copying.
REM  /C           Continues copying even if errors occur.
REM  /I           If destination does not exist and copying more than one file,
REM               assumes that destination must be a directory.
REM  /Q           Does not display file names while copying.
REM  /F           Displays full source and destination file names while copying.
REM  /L           Displays files that would be copied.
REM  /G           Allows the copying of encrypted files to destination that does
REM               not support encryption.
REM  /H           Copies hidden and system files also.
REM  /R           Overwrites read-only files.
REM  /T           Creates directory structure, but does not copy files. Does not
REM               include empty directories or subdirectories. /T /E includes
REM               empty directories and subdirectories.
REM  /U           Copies only files that already exist in destination.
REM  /K           Copies attributes. Normal Xcopy will reset read-only attributes.
REM  /N           Copies using the generated short names.
REM  /O           Copies file ownership and ACL information.
REM  /X           Copies file audit settings (implies /O).
REM  /Y           Suppresses prompting to confirm you want to overwrite an
REM               existing destination file.
REM  /-Y          Causes prompting to confirm you want to overwrite an
REM               existing destination file.
REM  /Z           Copies networked files in restartable mode.
REM
REM The switch /Y may be preset in the COPYCMD environment variable.
REM This may be overridden with /-Y on the command line.

REM Display how much space is left after backing up. Must not be zero. Worry if it is a low value.
echo.
dir | find “free”

REM Finished
echo.
echo Backing-up finished.

REM Remove environment variable values
set BackupSource=
set BackupDestination=

REM Stop so that user can see the results
pause

—————————————————————————————

Compass FM running full power tests

For the past few months Compass FM has been running full power test transmissions of pre-recorded announcements and music from their transmitter site on Mount Grey just inland from Amberley. Great signal, great music. Opening Day is Easter sometime.

Yet another aftershock

They just keep coming. Here in Waipara (60km north of Christchurch) we only seem to feel aftershocks that are 4 or greater.  This evening’s 5.3 aftershock caused a bit of shuddering here followed by some swaying. Almost as it happened, the 705 ham repeater in Christchurch erupted with reports as people tried to find out the extent of its effects.

I was logged in to Facebook at the time and there was a flurry of friends and ‘friends’ there sharing information about it too.

A Blunt Presidential Insult

I am a co-owner co-moderator of the ZLHAMS reflector and in a recent email sent to a number of fellow hams, our NZART President Roy Symon supported an email from Bruce Means ZL3BM stating amongst other things:

“Now, before you all answer at the same time, aren’t you glad I’m banned from David’s Debacle, I know I am.  Sometime, leave it a few days then reread the postings.  Nearly as good as the Goon Show,  David and his sycophant Barnes , control your writings, you can’t write what you want or like unless it fits their parameters.  Ask Baz, just before I was banned he was told to stand in the corner for a week. Just who the hell do they think they are. Goebells was a master at this sort of behaviour. Suppress any dissent, that way “truth” is what you want it to be. It sure is, on David’s Debacle!!! Similar to Nazi’s the pair of them, particularly Oberofengruber Barnes, Iron Cross and Oak Leaf Cluster. You all bow to their dictates. Someone on DD said that all  one has to do to let tyranny prevail is let yourself to be pushed around ( words to that effect ).”