Author Archive
Thursday, April 3rd, 2008
Tom Holland on Chicago Radio
My brother Tom sent me an email today, letting me know he will be on the Johnny B radio show tomorrow morning (April 4th, Friday) with Mud Morganfield ( son of Mickinley Morganfield, a.k.a. Muddy Waters…) as a promo for a show they are playing at Buddy Guy’s Legends in Chicago, IL tomorrow night. He [...]
No Comments » - Posted in Music by admin
Monday, March 31st, 2008
Chicago Marathon
Perhaps this is a bit of thesis writing induced lunacy, but after talking with a friend of mine, I am currently planning on running the Chicago marathon in Oct 2009. She seems to think I won’t do it. I am currently far too out of shape to run the marathon this year, and I figure [...]
2 Comments » - Posted in Uncategorized by admin
Tuesday, March 25th, 2008
Keg Resonator
Back in the 1960′s antenna sites started getting a tad crowded, and one solution proposed was to connected many transmitters to a single antenna, using a parallel network of bandpass filters that would allow isolation between transmitters. After looking for ways to accomplish this at VHF, it was found that resonant cavities could be formed [...]
No Comments » - Posted in Antennas,Electromagnetics by admin
Sunday, March 16th, 2008
Finished my measurements
Finally today I went in and finished off my antenna measurements. I had a problem last week that I wasted a lot of time trying to figure out — the main beam pattern was shifted approximately 25 degrees off broadside, which is clearly not right for a patch antenna. Problem is, the range absorber isn’t [...]
1 Comment » - Posted in Uncategorized by admin
Thursday, March 6th, 2008
Freecycle
Freecycle! I read about this in the paper today, and so I finally checked it out tonight — it is a great idea. Basically, it does the old trick of turning your trash into…well, someone else’s gold. All for free! It serves two purposes: 1.) keeps junk out of landfills that are still useful to [...]
No Comments » - Posted in General Science by admin
Sunday, March 2nd, 2008
My Emag Lineage
A lot of people in RF/Microwaves/Electromagnetics can probably trace back a path of teachers to Maxwell…and here is mine: Maxwell taught emag to Jeans (at Cambridge), Jeans taught emag to Smythe (at Princeton) Smythe taught emag to Rusch (at CalTech) Rusch taught emag to Strangeway (at University of Southern California) Strangeway taught emag to me [...]
2 Comments » - Posted in Antennas,Electromagnetics,Grad School by admin
Sunday, March 2nd, 2008
Gravitational Lens
Nasa’s Picture of the day has an image taken using the magnification due to gravity of a galaxy to see galaxies much further on. It’s a phenomenon that has been used for a long time to see distant objects. Really interesting to see an actual image of how this looks.
No Comments » - Posted in Space by admin
Thursday, February 28th, 2008
Just Milling About…
Antennas! I have spent the last few days learning to use our milling machine, practicing on cheap substrate, fixing the alignment here and there…but I think I have the hang of it now. I built my first antenna today, which I was pretty happy about. One problem I ran into was the ceramic substrate I [...]
No Comments » - Posted in Antennas,Grad School by admin
Wednesday, February 27th, 2008
Mark Your Calender…
For today! Being both a fan of NPR, and Wilco…this is perfect. Over the years I have been lucky to have caught a number of really, really great Wilco shows, so I am definitely looking forward to this. There is a large number of other very good shows up on this series – including Okkervil [...]
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Saturday, February 23rd, 2008
My shortwave Radio
I got a Garmin FM/AM/Shortwave radio for Christmas, and here and there I scan around and see what I can pick up. For a while I kept catching a channel out of the Netherlands, and a handful of other stations I can’t exactly place because they weren’t in English and I couldn’t listen to hear [...]