Today I went to The American Museum of Radio and Electricity! They have a stunning collection of original equipment, beautiful electrostatic generators, handblown glassware in breathtakingly ornate configurations, shelves and shelves of radios from the 1920s ... the highlights were a gorgeous reproduction of the Joseph Priestly static machine, an ( Read more... )

I am AD7UI

Over the past few days we of The Secret House packed (and packed and packed and packed) and tossed (and tossed and tossed) and cleaned (and cleaned a little extra) and moved away. Last night we all drove up to Port Townsend with our final belongings weighing down the car and the cat carrier in my lap ( Read more... )

I went to a nuclear reactor this morning! What did you do?

Last night I took all 4 amateur radio exams (three levels of theory test plus morse code). It took two hours but I passed them all. As soon as the FCC gets ahold of the records, I have an extra class license! The hams giving the test thought it was great. They said they'd been doing the testing for 13 years and they could only remember one other ( Read more... )

Yesterday summerkid, bluesbodger, and dreefee came to The Secret House for an egg decorating party. I'd been blowing eggs for the past two weeks and had about two dozen, plus another dozen or so whole eggs for hardboiling. I got together some natural dyes to experiment with. Our guests brought extra pots. We tried red onion skins, spinach, beet powder, turmeric, grape juice ( Read more... )

I like to learn and practice stuff. I am a meta-hobbyist.

As per last year, here are the skills that I gained significantly in during 2005, with ratings given in this 26-point scale. Hours over number of levels changed are shown in parentheses.