gopher://aussies.space/1/~freet/phlog The free-floating phantasms resident in the mind of The Free Thinker, brought home to you in 68 columns of plain-text purity by the kind generosity of your local neighbourhood Gopher. en-au https://cyber.harvard.edu/rss/rss.html Mon, 20 Oct 2025 09:09:33 +1100 gopher://aussies.space/0/~freet/phlog/2025-10-20Neck_Test.txt NECK TEST Was it lifting the wooden sleepers which were a bit too heavy to handle alone? Was it bending over an engine bay while removing some old fuel injector hoses supposed to be replaced last weekend? Was it bending over a laptop I had out to duplicate my backups when I was too lazy to grab the stand to bring the screen up to a comfortable height? Or was it pushing through the initial discomfort while doing my pre-bed push-ups the night before it got really bad? Or countless other possibilities? While waiting for my neck to heal these thoughts to the origins of its agony have been circling around in my head constantly for the last four days while I moan around hopelessly, alternating from silence in bed, to the still-tiring noise of entertainment on TV, to the shrieks of pain as I thrash around trying to use the kitchen. Just a sore neck, nothing new, but an extended case, and now the old dilemma of when to go back to trying to do things. I've kept up sending out orders, but I was supposed to return to a project I put on hold to deal with my tax return and applying the tariff charges to orders from the USA (which has turned out to be proper pain in the neck all of itself). After this weekend I really hoped to be back in action, and indeed it seemed the constant pain was reduced this morning to just constant discomfort. But here in fact is the test, typing this on my laptop, one-handed with the other supporting my head, and again the pain is creeping up along with my 9AM start-work time. Am I being undiciplined? I'm a bit out of passion for this project - in seeking to make something other people want to buy these days it's all about working on the firmware code rather than real electronics designed on paper and with logic tied together by solder alone. Is it an excuse? No, I can't stand much more of typing this whinge, so thinking properly about code would be way out. Away with the laptop for another day, or at least until I'm due to prepare those orders and shriek my way into the car to drop them at the post office. - The Free Thinker. gopher://aussies.space/0/~freet/phlog/2025-09-17On_Gopher-Optics.txt ON GOPHER-OPTICS So with my last phlog post, 2025-09-15Optical_ROOPHLOCH.txt, I've finally fulfilled my long-running intention since 2023-09-30Last_Radio_Roophloc.txt to make a ROOPHLOCH post via optical communications. Unfortunately since it turned out to be a drizzly night, it ended up a pretty short message, but received very well. I measured out the distance from my optical transmitter to the receiver perched on the verandah of my house as about 17m. Not exactly a record breaking distance, but a step up from the 9.5m of my first test down the longest unobstructed path inside my house. The receiving laptop on the verandah automatically uploaded the message using my home WiFi, which I probably could have picked up from the transmitter laptop anyway, but that's not the point. ROOPHLOCH (the point): gopher://zaibatsu.circumlunar.space/1/~solderpunk/roophloch First and second world war tripods aren't particularly accommodating for fine directional adjustments, even though it seems the models I'm using were partly intended for an equivalent role as stands for heliographs. But they are quick and easy to mount to, and did the job quite well. Since I ended up packing up in a hurry due to the rain, I didn't get a photo of my set-up, but at least the photos I took before of the transmitter and receiver can still be seen here: gopher://aussies.space/1/~freet/photos/optical_comms/ As with my earlier optical post I used shell scripts to send and receive the serial data sent via my DIY optical Transmitter and receiver, then automatically upload it to the phlog. After all the trouble I had with getting the Linux serial configuration right for that, it was wonderful that everything pretty much just worked this time on the software side. The one issue I did have is that my optical receiver seems to have developed an intermittent tendency to oscillate. That might just be a loose connection inside or something to do with connecting ground to the laptop. I know RF noise from that laptop drowns out FM radio reception wherever it's running, so maybe I should try it with another one before digging too deep into that issue. Here are the latest copies of my scripts to transmit and receive phlog posts via serial connection, then automatically launch them into the Gopherverse. Much the same as those presented in 2025-01-01Lighting_Up_a_New_Year.txt, but now with some extra precautions to help with reliablity. OpenSSH could be used instead of PuTTY under "Uploading..." if desired, and setserial will probably need to be installed. The first USB serial device might be at /dev/usb/ttyUSB0 or /dev/ttyUSB0 in Linux. The stty commands might need to be run as root on some systems. Generally I've found there's a lot to go wrong! :) opticrx.sh ------------------------------------------------------------------- #!/bin/sh # opticrx.sh [filename] [serial device] [baud rate] # eg. opticrx.sh hello.txt /dev/usb/ttyUSB0 600 FILE="$1" DEV="$2" [ $3 ] && BAUD=$3 || BAUD=200 HOST=ausshell DEST=/home/freet/goph/phlog CMD="cd $DEST && /home/freet/bin/simplemkphlog.sh" stty -F $DEV raw icanon -crtscts $BAUD || exit # Set serial port time-out to 20min which setserial > /dev/null && sudo setserial $DEV closing_wait 120000 echo " Receiving $FILE at $BAUD baud..." cat $DEV > "/tmp/opticrx_$FILE" echo " Uploading..." pscp -C -sftp "/tmp/opticrx_$FILE" "$HOST:$DEST/$FILE" plink -C -batch "$HOST" "$CMD" less "/tmp/opticrx_$FILE" echo " Operation Complete" rm "/tmp/opticrx_$FILE" ------------------------------------------------------------------- optictx.sh ------------------------------------------------------------------- #!/bin/bash # optictx.sh [file] [serial device] [baud rate] # eg. optictx.sh hello.txt /dev/usb/ttyUSB0 600 FILE="$1" DEV="$2" [ $3 ] && BAUD=$3 || BAUD=200 # Set serial port time-out to 20min which setserial > /dev/null && sudo setserial $DEV closing_wait 120000 stty -F $DEV raw icanon -crtscts $BAUD || exit echo " Transmitting $FILE at $BAUD baud..." cat "$1" > $DEV echo -e '' > $DEV ------------------------------------------------------------------- The optical transmitter and receiver circuits are the same design I presented in place of last year's ROOPHLOCH, when I didn't get it ready in time: gopher://aussies.space/0/~freet/phlog/2024-10-01ROOflop.txt When I've sorted out the possible oscillation issue with the receiver, and chanced upon some more accommodating evening weather, I plan to try and find the limit for distance. It would be interesting to compare how it works in daylight too. It's fair to say I've got a long way to go to match the works of past optical adventurers, such as the work documented excellently on fellow-Australian Chris Long's website about analogue voice communication by light: http://www.modulatedlight.org/Modulated_Light_DX/MODULATED_LIGHT_DX.html And more info elsewhere at www.modulatedlight.org that I must get around to reading. They clearly think a fresnel lens would work better, but I tend to stick with the junk that I've got to hand. They can even transmit from mainland Australia overseas to Tasmania, sort of: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sil33vRms64 - The Free Thinker Index to my optical communications related posts so far: gopher://aussies.space/0/~freet/phlog/2023-09-30Last_Radio_Roophloc.txt gopher://aussies.space/0/~freet/phlog/2024-10-01ROOflop.txt gopher://aussies.space/0/~freet/phlog/2025-01-01Lighting_Up_a_New_Year.txt gopher://aussies.space/0/~freet/phlog/2025-02-02Night_of_Lights.txt gopher://aussies.space/0/~freet/phlog/2025-09-15Optical_ROOPHLOCH.txt gopher://aussies.space/0/~freet/phlog/2025-09-15Optical_ROOPHLOCH.txt ÿ OPTICAL ROOPHLOCH Well I've spent too long trying to get things right with my optical Tx/Rx and now it's starting to rain. I think I already accidentally uploaded a test transmission, so even if this doesn't get through maybe that will count. Apologies for any scrambled characters. Now for some hasty packing up. - The Free Thinker Notes on this post and what it was all about are here: gopher://aussies.space/0/~freet/phlog/2025-09-17On_Gopher-Optics.txt