Jason Hancock

This is part 3 of a series. Part 1 Part 2 We left off part 2 of the series with the hardware assembled, installed into the case, case mounted into the rack, and the base OS image booted up. I decided to install k3s as it seemed ideally suited to the nature of this cluster. The instructions in the Quick Start Guide worked well, however I ran into an issue that required me to modify the /boot/cmdline.

This is part 2 of a series. Part 1 Part 3 I have a shallow network rack in my office closet where my router, switch, and other miscellaneous equipment is mounted. I decided to design and 3D print a 1u case to house the equipment. I found a plate with the openings for all the ports on Thingiverse. I started with that and based on the mechanical drawings designed and printed an enclosure in three pieces.

This is part 1 of a series. Part 2 Part 3 I’ve decided to build a small home Kubernetes cluster for various reasons. I do a lot of k8s stuff at work and it would be nice to have a dev cluster other than the Docker Desktop built-in k8s cluster (it’s usually broken more often than it’s working). I have a few containerized workloads I run on my Synology NAS, but it’s not very powerful.

I put together a repository to that I hope might help someone bootstrap their next Go (golang) project backed by a sqlite database. I integrated a migration framework and added a test helper to help spin ephemeral databases during testing. You can find the code at https://github.com/jasonhancock/go-sqlite-bootstrap.

I coached my sons’ baseball teams this year and for my older son, the team’s manager and I used GameChanger to keep track of statistics. Throughout the season, we used the statistics to help set the lineup and the kids also enjoyed hearing about their stats. Towards the end of the season, we decided that we wanted to make baseball cards for the kids with their stats on them. I settled on using the 1987 Topps style card for the front and wanted something similar to the 1987 style card back.

I participated in the 2020 FT Roundup ham radio contest. This was my first time participating in a ham radio contest. The results can be found here. I placed 21st out of 33 in California. I placed 455 out of 927 worldwide in the single operator category. For my first attempt at this, with my extremely meager compromised antenna setup and not operating for the entire contest period, I think I did pretty well.

Working from home during the pandemic has presented some unique challenges for my family. Lately the kids (and occasionally my wife) will interrupt me while in a meeting. I wanted some sort of way to indicate to them that I was in a meeting. Being an amateur radio operator, I thought an “on-air” indicator light would be fitting. I wanted to be able to control it remotely. I looked around online to see if there was one that would fit my needs, thinking I could use a smart switch to turn it on/off.

I’ve been dabbling with some of the log formats commonly used in the amateur radio world. One of those formats is the Cabrillo format. I built a parser in Go for reading Cabrillo formated contest logs, but I’m unhappy with one aspect and I think it’s a deficit in the Cabrillo specification. If the exchange field of a QSO is supposed to contain a space between multiple pieces of information, you have to know that ahead of time otherwise you can’t properly parse the log.

The µBitx v6 transciever I bought never really worked out for me. I should have listened to the advice to avoid low-power/QRP rigs as your first HF radio. I ended up buying an Icom IC-7300 and it’s been a good radio. I struggled for a while trying to make voice contacts. I started out with a Wolf River Coils silver bullet antenna, but I couldn’t really get my signal out with it, probably due to how I had to deploy it in my backyard.

I passed the Amatuer Extra class ham radio license exam back in November. I recently applied for and received a vanity 2x1 call sign. Find me on the air as AG6K. I’ve been looking at lots of HF rigs. I’d like to get a Icom IC-7300, but don’t yet want to part with the cash since I still have to set up the rest of my shack. I’ve instead decided to purchase a the newish µBitx v6 transceiver along with an MFJ-4230DMP power supply (something capable of powering a 100W HF rig for when I do eventually get one), plus some odds and ends like some power pole connectors and a crimper, some coax, and some wire to build a dipole.