I was in an around music and music production for a long time, so I’ve long enjoyed the Song Exploder podcast where “musicians take apart their songs, and piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made.” Not every episode has music that I like but hey, it’s a podcast, skip those.
I wanted to post about today’s episode, which took me all the way back to high school: Thompson Twins “Hold me now”. It’s fantastic.
My favorite is probably Chvrches “Clearest blue”. But peruse the episode list and see if anything looks interesting. If you’ve never heard a song explained, you will be surprised at the time, love and craft behind a pop song.
I have a complicated history with ham radio. Years ago, a friend/co-worker and I got our one-day ‘Technician’ licenses, and for years after that I tried to make first contact. Like, talk to anybody. I learned about bands and power and radios and repeaters and programming software and hackable firmware and only managed walkie-talkie on FRS and GMRS. Suuuper frustrating.
I was recently emailing a former co-worker (Hi, Jon!) who’s taken up ham radio as hobby and somewhere in there we started talking about Meshtastic. Then in December it made front page on either Tildes or Lobsters and I was intrigued. Especially this story about using it on sailboats. And this followup post. I also sometimes watch his videos, so this Jeff Geerling post was also valuable.
Key bits:
It’s inexpensive – radios are $50 to $150, repeaters $100 to $300. Software, protocol and firmware are all open source.
It’s in the no-license-required ISM spectrum, meaning that you don’t need a ham or GMRS license.
It’s low power, so a radio can run for days, a repeater can be compact and solar-powered and you don’t need to plug stuff into the wall.
No need to drill holes in my house for coax or power because of #3.
It’s super limited: Line of sight, text messages. No pictures, no web pages.
It looks like low-stakes fun to learn and use.
Radio and repeater programming is via a web page – no programs to install! Yay Web Serial.
Based on some research, I ordered
Two Seeed SenseCAP T1000-E cards (waterproof, 2 day battery, GPS included) via Amazon for $51 each.
Note that I’m simplifying here a bit – the repeater came later, and the antenna was a recommendation from the ‘San Diego Mesh’ Discord.
The Meshtastic site planner predicted that the repeater + antenna would provide incredible coverage. Remember that this is based on a tenth of a watt! Like, less than a single display LED:
Cue detours in aforementioned Discord group, learning about device roles and the tyranny of Long-Fast, and I was back to not being able to talk to anyone.
In searching for help, I found that many folks had gotten frustrated with the design tradeoffs of Meshtastic and had started a newer project called Meshcore to address them:
So I spent half a day building and installing the repeater in the back yard only to a) not see traffic or get more than a single response and b) the estimated coverage was really shit:
One of the folks on the Discord sent me the key information: as seen on the West Coast Mesh page, local radios do not use the USA presets for frequency, bandwidth, spread factor and coding rate. I had been talking to no one! Here are the correct settings:1
That made the difference! Now I can see and talk to people. Here’s a chat from me, using the iOS app to a T1000-E card to the repeater, going 10 hops to get north of Los Angeles:
One of the two T1000-E cards is basically bad – after DFU reset, it’ll program and then not work. The WisMesh Tag from RAKwireless is supposed to better and more reliable. Others have also had issues with the T1000-E.
The Lilygo T-Echo sorta works.
The Heltec V3s all murder batteries – like an hour. Get V4 or something else.
The repeater seems to be good, but you gotta get that antenna way up high. I will try to do so – roof? PVC pipe as mast? Tree? Dunno yet but right now I can’t reach the friend I’ve convinced to try this with me.
It’s not super useful. The real uses are stuff like cellular outages, off-grid camping/hunting/hiking, remote no-infrastructure land use and nerding out.
My repeater is now showing up on on the WCMesh Map after I uploaded it. I am unreasonably pleased with this. Repeater public key is 4450A0B0C86FC09D7193196DE7C29078AACFB2999E75F06FE2C41C7E35861434
There’s a ‘room server’ feature where you program a radio to basically be a BBS / IRC server. This looks really cool, I see quite a few on the network and looks fun to try out.
Hashtag channels are public and ad-hoc. Try #test, #chat as well as the Public channel. Locally we’ve also got #sandiego.
Check this for a local group and their Discord. That got me unblocked several times, as well as advice on antennas and more.
Hardware I’d recommend to try it out based on a week or so:
Lilygo T-Deck+. I got mine from Amazon but it took weeks to arrive. Maybe look for in-stock.
If you need a repeater, my Wismesh Repeater Mini seems good. I like that it’s install-and-forget due to the solar+battery, plus I can check and administer it locally with Bluetooth or over the Meshcore network using the app. The consensus on Discord was that the 8dBi antenna is essential once you get past basic local use.
If you want to spend the least in order to see if anyone’s using it locally, I’d suggest checking the maps above first and then trying the WisMesh Tag or T-1000E cards.
Here’s a workshop and showroom tour of the Melanzana cut-and-sew shop in Leadville, Colorado. Here’s an interview with Melanzana’s founder, Fritz Howard. Melanzana produces all of their clothing in Leadville, a town of about 2600 people which, at over ten thousand feet above sea level, is the highest incorporated city in the US. This makes it challenging for them to expand production, and ultimately constrains their growth as a company. They handle this partly by selling the vast majority of their product in-person at their showroom, which actually requires appointments for most purchases and has a per-customer, per-visit limit on the quantity of clothing one can purchase.
I find Melanzana’s business strategy counterintuitive and unexpected, and I suppose it helps to explain the fact that I was totally unaware of Melanzana until a couple of months ago, when I was given one of their hoodies more or less by accident. What has remained a mystery, though, is the honestly shocking amount of attention this hoodie has received since then; it’s easily the most commented-upon garment I’ve ever owned, with both friends and strangers calling the brand out by name and complimenting the sweatshirt’s frumpy yet somehow athletic drape. I guess this is all to say that Melanzana seems to have forged their own idiosyncratic moral framework, and has somehow managed to convince a large number of New Yorkers that that framework is worthy of their attention.
I did a bit of looking and the video by MyLifeOutdoors was convincing – I managed to time a release on the site and bought the micro grid hoodie. It’s gonna get a lot of wear, and I figured it for something worth sharing. Melanzana reminds me of the Patagonia ethos – made for use, treats the employees well, does repairs and isn’t trying to grow endlessly. Good stuff.
As I have written about before, taking your phone to a protest is 100% going to get you written into various government data stores. This story today confirms that ICE is using Stingrays.
I went looking today for mounting options for my new! signed! Effin’ Birds poster and my first thought was how much I like the aluminum dibond on my UNIX Magic poster:
then I realized that I had never blogged it! So back in 2021, I read this story via Hacker News about a legendary 1970s conference poster full of inside Unix jokes and references, was instantly smitten and ordered one:
Anyway, the Unix poster is all that and continues to occupy a place of honor, right in the corner of my eye, because frankly my entire career has been Unix in various forms: Linux, NetBSD and OpenBSD, Irix, SunOS, Solaris, AIX, and others that I can’t recall any more. I’m counting MacOS since yeah, it’s Unix with a professional makeup, and so are Android and IOS.
(The time spent on OS/2, BeOS, Windows flavors, Desqview, GeoWorks, DOS… well, ahh well)
Now its time to add my signed EB poster – my better half bought this for me at ComiCon 2025:
So this is a mixed post – yeah, you should totally get a unix poster, you can DIY it for much less than the fancy print. Secondly, Effin Birds is awesome, I also have his wall calendar and some conference tchotchkes.
So a while ago, Reddit enshittified after taking PE money. Turned off the APIs, blocked third-party apps, etc. And the official app is a really shitty ad-laden experience. So. Do you have
A Macintosh
some code/build experience
and iPhone or iPad
the desire to read Reddit
A $99/year Apple Developer account
Stubborness?
The details would take ages to type out, thus numbers 2 and 6. Drop a comment if this is useful and I’ll write a followup; right now I’d guess I have maybe two-digit readership.
The source code that you want is called Winston, here on GitHub. Yes, like 1984. Clone it, load it into Xcode, and then modify the two bundle identifiers. I use the net.phfactor prefix since that’s my domain; be creative but they have to be unique to Apple.
I vaguely remember that you need to create a Reddit developer token which is also painful (See #6) but only needs doing once. The results are well worth the hassle. I just pulled main and rebuilt today after my build expired. (The $99 developer device builds are only good for a year. Apple forces everything through their App Store and this as close as they allow. Yes, it sucks.)
It will not come as news to anyone streaming music via Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon, Tidal, etc – the playlist is the proprietary bit. The music is identical but your curated playlists are a barrier to moving.
I’m in love with this “Halloween” playlist because it isn’t cheesy songs like the Monster Mash and Ghostbusters, instead, it’s an adults’ Halloweenish soundtrack featuring great moody music from bands like M83, the Cure, the National and more. This plays nonstop at my house from Labor Day through the end of October.
But I don’t use Spotify. Because of the subsidized hardware, we use Amazon to stream to a bunch of Echos connected to speakers.
The solution is a free web app called Tune My Music. It’s free, and Amazon lists it as an approved way to import playlists. It can go back and forth between a great number of services, but for me I just setup a new Spotify account (yay hide my email!), granted access to TMM, and then playlist access to Amazon music, and it copied it over. Only one track was missing; good enough.
So maybe a bookmark in case you want to move between services.
Nearly perfect but just too fragile, leading to lots of orders:
They are nearly ideal. Zero flavor retention, easy to clean, great for hot coffee and ice cold beer and tea and sparkling water. I get the 18oz version in two packs. Plus they insulate well so no condensation and I can savor.
But they break so damned easily. Which is why I’ve repurchased so many times.
A while ago the Wirecutter recommended a glass lined bottle from Purist and I bought one. It’s as promised but the shape is too deep to hand wash and the lid is impossible to clean internally. so off I went.
And yes I firmly believe that coffee flavor is best from a wide opening shape and glass or ceramic. Reddit agrees… mostly.
The main features I want are insulation, glass or ceramic lining and large at 16oz or so. Two full cups from my French press. I found this Asobu:
It’s… excellent. Super slick coating, insulated well, a breeze to clean, coffee tastes great. Nice and wide so the aromas are good.
The shape is a lot like my Yeti that I still have.
I’ve had it a few days, rigorously testing with coffee, tea, sparkling water, beer, mint tea and it’s great. Super slick ceramic, nice cork, wide and stable, good value at $30. Worthy of my YouShouldBuy category!
This is a topic for a small percentage of people, but the Internet is vast so I’ll post it for others who’ll find it useful.
By way of context, I am 6’10” (208cm) and 260lb (118kg). I’m looking for daily clothes for office work mostly, and exercise gear as well with a strong focus on longevity and environmental impact. I do have a couple suits and a tuxedo but those mostly sit idle so they’ll be discussed as a side topic. Let’s go!
My go-to, trusted brands for daily wear
Eddie Bauer – pay attention to fit descriptions (classic versus relaxed) but many of my clothes are EB. Their modular winter coat was great for Midwestern winters.
Land’s End – similar notes here. For a while, they were owned by Sears and you could try stuff on, but even as web-orders they are solidly reliable.
LL Bean – ditto, though I think a slightly smaller selection of tall sizes.
String King – this is an awesome find. A lacrosse brand from Los Angeles, but they make custom t-shirts, hoodies and quarter-zips. You tell the site your measurements and they ship it to you, complete with your name on the tag. I’ve got on t-shirt from them, in the poly blend, and its holding up well and seems an excellent value, so I plan to shop here again.
Levi’s – the 541 athletic fit is my daily. I take each pair to a local tailor to add two more belt loops on the back, since they are made with only a single rear loop, and then I wear the hell out of them. 2% Lycra/elastane. Wrangler and Carhartt also make tall sizes and I’ve a pair of each, but save them for yardwork, mud and camp outs as I find them less comfortable than the Levi’s.
J. Crew – I’m only a bit of their clothing. Sometimes excellent.
Darn Tough – their merino-blend socks are expensive at ~20/pair but they work superbly, last a long time and are fully guaranteed for life. Despite having size 15 feet, I prefer their XL size to the fit of the XXL.
Ex Officio – their give and go travel brief is expensive at $26 but last. I have a couple of weeks’ worth and they’ve held out well.
New discoveries I’ve not yet purchased
American Tall – sizes up to 7’1”. I’ve a nephew who likes their clothing.
Tommy Bahama – I’m not really the Parrothead type that I associate with the brand but their tall size listing actually looks promising.
The Gap – I’ve few from them but they’re well regarded
Norrøna. Similar to Patagonia in that they don’t sell tall sizes, but my 6’2” sibling tells me that their torsos and sleeves are long enough. Premium prices and reputation. They also have a mountain bike lineup with longer torsos and sleeves.
A relative (6’2”) strongly recommends the European brand Devold. Their stuff is well made, proportioned for tall folks despite not being labeled as such and is durable and well made. A quick search found this importer, so I may give them a try.
Exercise clothing
AeroTech Designs makes mountain biking jerseys and shorts. I’ve their long-sleeve merino jersey and it’s great.
The tech shirts from Eddie Bauer are my go-to here. Since learning that microfibers from polyester are a significant pollutant, I’m searching for merino replacements but haven’t found one yet. Contact me if you can help!
Patagonia does not make tall sizes but they seem to make their cycling jerseys long in the torso since cycling requires a bent-forward position. I have two pairs of their Dirt Craft shorts and the 3/4 sleeve merino jersey, and they are worth every penny and fit pretty well.
Kitsbow makes high-end outdoor and cycling clothing to order, in America. It’s beautiful stuff and quite expensive. They now have a few tall items! I’ve one of their hot-weather jerseys (Superflow Cooling Tee) (took a chance on a non-tall XL size) and it’s damned good at wicking. I admire them as a company and, if you read up on them, I think you might also. They recently introduced a used-gear store called Experienced Gear.
Cognative MTB (great name, also US-based) now has unhemmed 39″ inseam riding pants! In green and black. Bought a pair, getting them hemmed, they look good.
I skim via RSS as explained here, and two sites I’ve come to trust are Dappered and Put This On. String King and Taylor Stitch, for example, were both via Dappered.
Formal wear
Back when I was doing more business travel, a friend recommended Sam’s Tailor, on the Kowloon side of Hong Kong. I’ve been there twice, and gotten a suit, two blazers, several dress shirts and some dress pants. It’s been years since I was there though. My tuxedo was a random purchase on a trip to Singapore, and the price and experience were meh so I’d recommend Sam’s there also.
Note that Sam’s does women’s clothing too – I took one of my wife’s favorite shirts along and they made a couple copies in silk for her.
I hope that this list helps someone else out. Do contact me or leave a comment, please.
ultracrepidarian 