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How to self-host (almost) everything in your life with unRAID

How to build a Raspberry Pi APRS Tracker using Dire Wolf

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If you care about your privacy, using a trusted VPN is a requirement for doing anything on the internet these days. I have used ExpressVPN for over 7 years and after reading the TorrentFreak 2024 review of VPN providers who do not log, I think you should too. If you sign up with my referral link, we BOTH get 1 month of free service 😁!

This is an affiliate link; it helps support keeping my website content up to date.

This is a follow up to my last post about getting my Amateur Radio Basic Qualification (with Honours) and being interested in APRS. Since then, I’ve made some progress in my ham radio journey and setup my own APRS tracker that I run in my truck! This allows me to go explore our backcountry roads without fear that I will get lost.

What lies beyond is mostly a brain dump of notes I made over the course of putting this project together so that in the future I can refer back to it when I forget some things about the setup. I’m hoping that it helps you when setting up your own APRS tracker using some open-source software called Dire Wolf and some other relatively inexpensive hardware.

It’s worth noting that this post does not cover any of the hardware setup required with a VHF radio, antenna, power requirements, etc.; In the future I may put together a part two post outlining my setup and how I have everything configured.

📡 VE7TZB

If you care about your privacy, using a trusted VPN is a requirement for doing anything on the internet these days. I have used ExpressVPN for over 7 years and after reading the TorrentFreak 2024 review of VPN providers who do not log, I think you should too. If you sign up with my referral link, we BOTH get 1 month of free service 😁!

This is an affiliate link; it helps support keeping my website content up to date.

The road to getting my Canadian Amateur Radio Basic Qualification

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tldr; In November of this year I took an Amateur Radio (aka “ham” radio) course with the local Cowichan Valley Amateur Radio Society (CVARS) club, studied for 5 weeks straight every night, and passed my Basic Qualification exam on November 14 2021 with honours! I scored 91% which was the highest in the cohort 🥳

📡 VE7TZB

The Best VSCode Extensions for Web Development in 2020

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I’ve been using Visual Studio Code (VSCode for short) as my editor of choice for what feels like a very long time. Ever since I first set eyes on the project the project and the community has intrigued me.

My primary use case for VSCode is web development and over the years I’ve amassed a very finely tuned environment and extensions list that comes with me to every computer I use. What follows is a list of the best VSCode extensions that I have installed and personally used, along with an explanation of the value each extension provides.

How to setup XAMPP-VM in MacOS

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If you’re someone just getting started with web development and you’re leveling up your learning to include PHP and other server-side languages, and you have an Apple Mac product of some kind running macOS 10.15, it’s very likely that you’ve ran into a wall trying to get your first index.php file to run. You could just open the Terminal.app and type php index.php which would run your file through the built-in php interpreter, but let’s say you want to view it in your web browser; how do you do that? Well, this is where XAMPP comes in.

How to use a DSLR or mirrorless camera as a webcam on macOS

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[March 2021 UPDATE] Revisited — Since posting this, a bunch of new tech has been released and over one year into the world-wide pandemic for COVID-19 our lives have fundamentally changed (for the better in some instances, not so in others). I have revised some of the sections and updated the content to reflect alternative offerings since the original publish date. Most notably is the addition of webcam software available from most major camera manufacturers.

2010-2020 - A decade in the mirror

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I apologize in advance for the long post; it’s been awhile since I wrote anything on my blog and this one took some time to compile my thoughts. A lot happens in 10 years!

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