10. September 2010 by admin.

Satellite Sector Sees Business Returning, but What Happens Next?

http://www.satellitetoday.com/eletters/ibc/2010-09-09/35001.html?hq_e=el&hq_m=2041282&hq_l=5&hq_v=4737859b62

Satellite Sector Sees Business Returning, but What Happens Next?

Tired of hearing about the collapse of the economy or how sluggish the recovery has been?

(Alan Spicer Says: You got my attention.)

Well, if you’re in the satellite sector, it seems that you don’t have to anymore, and IBC 2010 opens at a time when business looks to be booming.

   Throughout the economic crisis, the satellite operators have felt little impact, and now business for FSS players is reaching highs that haven’t been seen in quite a while. According to Euroconsult research, transponder fill rates have reached 77 percent, the highest rate in 10 years, and this number may peak at 78 percent before the end of the year.
   The markets also have opened back up for satellite projects, with project both small and large and from new ventures and established operators able to find backers for their business plans.

   This resurgence is more than welcome but also raises a few warning flags. First, will this business resurgence extend throughout the satellite sector, and second, will this rush by operators to add more capacity create a glut that ultimately drives transponder prices down as part of another boom-and-bust cycle?

   It looks like IBC 2010 will ride the optimism of one of the most positive business climates in the past several years, but satellite players and the communications sector as a whole still needs to be wary of its past.

(More at the link)

—

Alan Spicer Marine Telecom

http://www.marinetelecom.net and http://www.wifiyacht.net

+1 954-683-3426

communications @ marinetelecom.net

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10. September 2010 by admin.

Communications, Television: Analysts Cautious on 3-D TV Take-Up (Satellitetoday.com)

http://www.satellitetoday.com/eletters/ibc/2010-09-09/35002.html?hq_e=el&hq_m=2041282&hq_l=9&hq_v=4737859b62

* Alan Spicer’s Comments: Most of us just got HDTV in the last few years. In Marine, Yachting, the already had large flat screen TV’s (at least in the Salon) on many yachts. Some of them (trust me a boat gave me one) weighed a TON and didn’t have the newer HDMI inputs. A lot of below decks TV’s were analog 4:3 TV boxes of the old NTSC TV style. A lot of those are getting switched over on boats to flat panel TV’s. But High Definition Content was a little slow coming to yachting. DirecTV HD couldn’t be watched until just recently (last year?) on KVH Satellite Systems and also Seatel / Cobham just came out with a home dish in a Auto-Align System that gets the typical white Radome. That has to be a BIG antenna. KVH came out with a smaller HDTV antenna I believe it was last year.

Anyway like I was saying … a lot of people have already laid out cash expenditures for Flat Panel TV’s most of them lately being Digital (ATSC) TV, HDMI Input, and consequently HDTV capable. I wonder, like this article says, how many people are going to want to lay out cash again … to have 3D TVs ? I for one am not real excited about the idea of having to wear some kind of 3D glasses in order to watch TV. Sometimes I watch TV and work on the computer at the same time. Sometimes people are in a social setting … Let’s say on yachts … in the salon … it almost seems kind of rude to be sitting there with 3D glasses on. And like others have said the glasses are often specific to the TV model and they can get lost or broken. Anyway my complaints and opinions aside - here is the article I just spotted:

————————————————————————————————————————————————

While 3-D TV continues to dominate headlines and discussions due to early efforts by broadcasters such as DirecTV, Discovery and ESPN, many industry analysts remain cautious about the potential take-up of 3-D TV.

   “ABI is being a bit cautious with our forecast for 3-D-ready TV sales. We believe that the market will grow, but TV manufacturers are placing the technology in TVs without having a pull from consumers at this point,” said Jason Blackwell, senior analyst, ABI Research. “We have not completely finalized our 3-D TV forecast, but by 2015, 3-D TV will reach about 18 percent penetration of worldwide, flat panel-TV sales. In markets like North America and Western Europe, penetration will exceed 20 percent of flat panel-TV sales. We believe that HD and Internet connectivity will be more significant drivers for consumer purchases than 3-D alone.”

   Maxim Baudry, a satellite analyst at French telecoms consultancy, Idate, said, “It is only after 2015 that we think 3-D will become more popular, when price of TV sets decrease and the technology becomes more mature. There are a number of reasons why expect the take-up to be slow. Firstly, with the current economic context, people try to avoid expenses that they consider not so important. Secondly, a majority of households have already spent money for a brand new HDTV set, and they are not willing to spend immediately money for a new 3-D TV set. Thirdly, prices of 3-D TV sets are extremely high right now. Finally, 3-D content is not widely available yet on premium channels.”

   One of the questions now is does it make sense for broadcasters to make aggressive moves into 3-D TV? “Most leading broadcasters are considering 3-D and the implications of acquiring and offering 3-D content,” said Anna Hunt, senior analyst, IMS Research. “The cost for 3-D content production is quite high, and penetration of 3-D TV sets in the home is currently low, so everyone is taking cautious steps, looking to identify what type of content would benefit most from 3-D and how they can deliver 3-D content using existing infrastructure.”

   The additional effort required to produce 3-D programming and making sure it is high quality also is a detriment to many broadcasters, said Blackwell. “I don’t think it makes sense for everything to be broadcast in 3-D, and in many cases the effort would be better spent on HD,” he said.

(More at the link above.)

—

Alan Spicer Marine Telecom

http://www.marinetelecom.net and http://www.wifiyacht.net

+1 954-683-3426

communications @ marinetelecom.net

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9. September 2010 by admin.

* Alan Spicer says: 

Google.com’s logo, which often gets changed to some kind of gizmo on holidays and such, the day before went into a bouncing balls gadget … and then yesterday it went into a grey backrounded “Google” which changed back into color as you typed in the search box. Several blogs and online sites speculated as to what this was all about … some kind of Google announcement was forthcoming with an event pending? Anyway now, Google.com “classic” home page does searches ahead of your typing … already returning results after the first letter. I don’t know if anyone else saw it but it was sort of doing this already for some time on iGoogle if you register with Google and get a username and password (e.g. if you have Google Gmail.) It seems to be still acting the same way on iGoogle as it has been acting lately. Returning a drop-down box with possible things that you might be “going to type” before you type them. I guess that kind of helps sometimes if others have already searched for what you’re looking for then it will give you suggestions as you type. But it seemed to piss me off quite often because whatever “code” Javascript or whatever that does that … seemed to bog down my system a bit. I kept wanting to blame my wireless keyboard, but it wasn’t that. It was that “read ahead” … “think ahead” thing going on in iGoogle. Well it seems like Google.com “classic” has extended this even more, and it’s actually returning full page “results” as you progress in typing from the first letter on. * I, for one, am not sure I like that. I don’t think I need to get results back for each-and-every letter that I type in a search text. I only need it to kick in, if at all, when I get to the “meat” of what I’m looking for. I think … (”It don’t really matter what I think, … once that first bullet goes past you head … politics and that other sh just goes right out the window” — Blackhawk Down) that it has a bad tendancy to encourage people to do “fuzzy searching” and “fuzzy surfing” of the web. If too many choices are presented - too soon in the dialog for a search request - then we tend to go “hey that looks interesting…” even if it has NOTHING to do with what we’re searching for. It could be a real time waster. Another cost of lost productivity in businesses across america (both big, in the cubicles, and small office / home office) because of all the fuzzy surfing that it will cause. That’s just my 2 cents worth for now… On to the article from PC World.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/205041/google_instant_searches_the_web_before_you_type.html?tk=nl_dnx_h_crawl

Google Instant Searches the Web As You Type

Jared Newman, PC World
Sep 8, 2010 1:38 pm

Google has rekindle its love for speedy Web searches with Google Instant, a new version of the search engine that displays results as you type.

When typing a search query with Google Instant, results appear after the first letter is entered, and they update as the user types. Marissa Mayer, Google’s vice president of search and user experience, said results are actually delivered “before you type,” because Google Instant predicts and automatically completes search terms.

According to Google, a typical searcher spends nine seconds entering a query, and 15 seconds searching for answers. Google hopes to shave two to five seconds per search using Google Instant.

Click to EnlargeGoogle claims that Instant won’t considerably slow down Internet connections, because the amount of data delivered for search terms is relatively small, and because the system only sends parts of the page that change when more typing alters a search result. For connections that are already slow, Google Instant automatically turns off, and users can also shut off the service through their user preferences or by clicking the drop down box to the right of the search bar.

(more at the link above.)

—

Alan Spicer Marine Telecom

http://www.marinetelecom.net and http://www.wifiyacht.net

+1 954-683-3426

communications @ marinetelecom.net

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8. September 2010 by admin.

* Alan Spicers Note: A line from that movie “21″ has Kevin Spacey saying “Welcome to Vegas!”. And someone could just as easily say, about the Hurricane Season, Welcome to Florida! or Welcome to the Caribbean. And some members wrote that on this thread in Dockwalk’s forums.

http://www.dockwalk.com/Essentials/DockTalk.aspx?g=posts&t=34058

Janine:

Forecasters have been building up this hurricane season as one for the books. On Sunday, August 29, the Caribbean got its first taste of fury. Hurricane Earl, which churned into a Category 4 (currently a Cat 2), hit the islands of St. Maarten and Antigua with ferocity. Cbsnews.com reports that Earl gained enough strength to become a hurricane on Sunday morning by drawing in the warm Caribbean water – at 86 degrees F. According to News.yahoo.com, Earl uprooted trees and left power outages in his wake. Antigua was left flood laden. Cbsnews.com states that Antigua’s airport was closed and flights suspended. Cruise ships headed for the island were diverted. This is when hurricane-force winds began to radiate outward – up to 50 miles from Earl’s eye.  Go-Jamaica.com reports Antigua was without power when trees toppled onto electrical lines due to the strength of the then Category 3 winds. St. Maarten saw much of the same. News.yahoo.com maintains that no casualties were reported from officials on either island. As Earl tracks north, just off the coast of the U.S., Tropical Storm Fiona seems to be following suit but the area of activity that was Tropical Storm Gaston has dissipated with only a 40 percent chance of re-developing. Are there any crew in Antigua or St. Maarten who rode out the storm? If so, please send photos and share your experiences here.

As we move deeper into the 2010 Atlantic hurricane season, we will keep our weather eye open as yachts prepare to head back across the pond for boat shows and an upcoming winter season in the Caribbean.

Pascal: (like the programming language? hell no?, really Pascal?) also writes…

there is way too much sensationalism in hurricane “coverage” as evidenced by some of the above quotes!

yes, some trees will fall, there will be a few power outages and a few unprepared structures or vessels will loose awnings and canvas.  sure, airports will close for a day and cruise ships will be diverted…   big deal…

having delt with hurricanes for almost 30 years, either on st Barths  and now Miami,  i’ve learned that while hurricanes need to be taken seriously there is way too much hype out there.  but hey, storm coverage is good for ratings which is why it’s become “cool” to have “reporters” lean into the wind holding a microphone in one hand while the others push their hood on their head.

or better, watching news report of long lines at FEMA centers in miami after wilma  in 05 when most stores had reopened…

that said, you can’t take chances.  i flew back to Nantucket on thursday and got the boat i run out of there once i saw that the NHC forecast had the track very close to the island. right now i’m in Mystic CT as the track has shifted a little more to the west and further from the island.

here is the view from my HelmCam… not too exciting i’m afraid! just rain and average breeze on the Mystic river!

http://www.sandbarhopper.com/webcam.html

and Henning writes:

No doubts about the hype. After my foray around Lake Worth and docking up at the PB Yacht Club in the middle of Frances, I was surprised that CNN wanted to interview me, turns out I had been on live for the last 20 minutes. After that was all done, I was watching as the reporter was standing there on the walkway in full foul weather gear leaning into the wind giving his report and just then this dude just wearing a pair of shorts strolls on behind him walking his little dog just “la te da” style. It was comedy.

* Alan says: That would have been quite a comedy to see, indeed!

* I also posted on Dockwalk …

I always thought it was a little strange, the warnings that everyone *else* should stay inside … while the news crews go out, supposedly in the midst of hurricane weather. How are they any more qualified to be out in dangerous weather than anyone else? And why do we need to see their raincoats and hat hoodies flapping to believe there is bad weather in an area? I made a blog post about this. Welcome to Vegas! a pun on a quote from the movie “21″ but instead someone could say “Welcome to Florida” or “Welcome to the Caribbean”. I feel for anyone in any area affected by Tropical Storm and Hurricane weather, but in yachting a lot of “boats” go north … It’s worth pointing out that the storms seem to be heading that way this year. Is that just a current trend? Or has that happened before?

—

Alan Spicer Marine Telecom

http://www.marinetelecom.net and http://www.wifiyacht.net

+1 954-683-3426

communications @ marinetelecom.net

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8. September 2010 by admin.

http://www.dockwalk.com/Essentials/DockTalk.aspx?g=posts&t=34068

Do engineers make good Captains? Captains need to have a solid grasp of engineering and this is precisely why Engineers are able to make the switch Captain on smaller yachts.

Absolutely right! Only 10% of a Captain’s job is driving the ‘boat’, the rest is management which a good Engineer will have already accomplished! I’m also a fan of the person that drive sthe boat and breaks it should fix it!!!!! LOL

Engineers do not make good captains on larger boats. They are too logical and lack the emotional compassion to run an effective crew. Besides, Engineers hate Deck crew by nature, never met one who didn’t. So you see the issue there. Now, we need to define Engineer. A person with mechanical aptitude who runs a 60-80 footer is not an engineer, and does make a great captain. This question is relative to vessel size. It takes ten years to be a good Chief Engineer and about Seven years to get all the tickets to be captain on a yacht over 500tons, so you just don’t see it….

(More at the link, above.)

—

Alan Spicer Marine Telecom

http://www.marinetelecom.net and http://www.wifiyacht.net

+1 954-683-3426

communications @ marinetelecom.net

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8. September 2010 by admin.

Previously I blogged about:

http://blog.marinetelecom.net/2010/08/24/the-personal-computer-revolution-historical-and-imsai-8080-emulator-running-the-led-demo-alanspicer/

The retro computer simulators (important not only for historical signifigance but also an excellent way to prepare for the Hexadecimal codes used in the new Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6) that will start replacing IPv4 “IP Addressing” as soon as some time next year), one of which was Imsai 8080 in Z80pack by Udo Munk that runs in Linux, can be used to program and run 8080 and Z80 Machine Language “code” assembled (compiled) from 8080 or Z80 valid source code programs.

Lawrence Woodman, on http://techtinkering.com/articles/?id=11 created a bouncing light program for the Z80pack Imsai Simulator … titled: Writing My First Program To Toggle In To The IMSAI 8080. I also manually toggled that program into the simulator more than twice. At least once in binary and maybe a time or two more in Hexadecimal because I like the way the FrontPanel representation on the Imsai 8080 makes Hexadecimal and Octal (and Binary) notation more easily visually understandable. Does that make any sense? Looking at a bunch of A through F and 0 through 9 “numbers” is not very intuitive usually. But when you look at the front of an Imsai 8080 and realise that there are Octal and Hex “helpers” marked right on the panel it gets kind of exciting. Well to me anyway????

The Imsai 8080, on the front panel, has the Address and Data bus all laid out in LED lights with Hexadecimal and Octal “rulers” showing “8-4-2-1″ for Hex, and “4-2-1″ notation for Octal. So all a person has to do to program in Hex, for example, is to have a memory location to start in … and the Hexadecimal patterns to enter in.  Let’s assume that the program starts at address “0″ (Zero) for simplicity. You just leave all of the switches down (this is the default at power on of the simulator) and hit “Examine” one time. The let’s say you have a pattern of “0EFF” to enter in. That’s a nice 16-bit number. You break it up into two sets of two hexadecimal digits “0E” and “FF”. Then you set about entering that into the panel on the right most 8 switches. Up is 1, down is 0. On and off. This will start at the 2nd set of BLUE switches on the panel. Under “Address Bus” and “Data Bus”. You can see the ruler right there with both “7-6-5-4-3-2-1-0″ and “8-4-2-1, 8-4-2-1″ as well as “2-1, 4-2-1, 4-2-1″. The 8-4-2-1 sequence is an aid in entering Hexidecimal into this computer. Starting at the first blue switch you want to figure out how “0E” will go in there? Well each hex digit is a “nibble” of 4 bits. So the zero “0″ goes in the first four switches and the 14 or “E” goes into the second four switches. What did I just say? “14″? Well yes, E in hexadecimal is 14 in decimal. So in the first four switches … none of them get turned ON. In the second 4 we want to reproduce the number 14 - so we add up from left to right the correct switches to add up to 14. That would be “8″ ON, “4″ ON, “2″ ON, and 1 stays OFF. And there you have it … you just toggled in an 8-bit piece of data representing “0E” into the computer. You would then hit the “DEPOSIT” switch and deposit that data (or program instruction code?) into memory - in which case your pattern would show up on the top DATA BUS LED lights. Then you can clear or turn OFF all 8 of those switches, and now you would want to enter in “FF”. Thats just “15″ and “15″ since F is 15 in Decimal. So 8+4+2+1 = 15, so all 4 switches would get flipped ON on both the Blue and the Red switches. And then you would hit DEPOST NEXT. Cool huh? It makes you appreciate life, right???? With our easy Apple Mac OS/X and Windows 7 or similar computers … all of this stuff is a thing of the past, right? Well for most people yes. Anyway that was basically the first line of instructions, that you would have just entered in above, for the Night Rider LED lights program. You would have a lot more of that switch flipping to do to enter in the rest of the program.

Anyway as Lawrence Woodman describes in his article:

Entering the program into the IMSAI 8080
The next bit is a little nerve racking and quite laborious.  There are 0×40 bytes of code here, which is 512 bits.  512 ones and zeros that have to be entered exactly.  512 ones and zeros that if not entered correctly mean either re-entering the whole program again‚ or going back through them to check which were entered incorrectly.  As well as this; if the program doesn’t work‚ is it because the program is wrong‚ or because I entered it in wrong?  But now is not the time to worry, I have tested the program on paper, the design is sound, I need to grab the bull by the horns and enter this program.
[end of quote]

* It’s quite laborous to enter that program into the Z80pack Imsai 8080 Simulator, right???? So I got bitten by a bug … a computer problem bug … It bothered me that every time that I wanted to run that “Night Rider” flashing LED demo program I had to go through the whole 512 + switch flipping routine and hope I got it right. If not I was debugging the memory locations every time to see what switch entries I flipped wrong. You can go back a read the memory locations and see what’s in there … and see if it matchins Lawrences listing. Quite often you make a mistake. One little bit switch flipped in the wrong direction and the whole program can be NO GOOD. Now you know how computer programs crash. One little bit, a “1″ or a “0″ in the wrong place or at the wrong time … and it means a completely different thing. Close the window on your desktop no longer means close the window … it means “crash the computer”. :-) Ha! ha! ha!

So instead of typing it again … let me paste in here my Z80 Assembler adaptation of Lawrences Program - which has the why and what of how I made it a loadable program that eliminates most of the toggle switching.
      ;——————————————————————–
      ; Here is your “Writing My First Program to Toggle into the Imsai
      ; 8080 (meaning the Z80Pack Frontpanel Imsai 8080 Emulator)
      ; Written by Lawrence Woodman on 5th November 2008 Techtinkering.com
      ; ——————————————————————-
      ; Your program listing reformatted 7 September 2010 by Alan Spicer -
      ; in an attempt to make the program reloadable by this simulator
      ; without having to toggle the whole thing in every time!
      ; ——————————————————————-
      ; Which brings us to … how can we save it so it can be loaded?
      ; The simulator will take “-xFILENAME” to load a hex or bin file
      ; and thus can load it at program run (Power On) and execute it with
      ; almost no toggle switching at all. But how do we make a hex or bin
      ; file out of this thing? We copy and paste your SOURCE listing …
      ; run it through a BUNCH of Unix/Linux utilties to try and get an
      ; Assembly Language Source File that *something* near to this sim
      ; can compile into bin or hex files. And so I did…
      ; ——————————————————————-
      ; I found out that there is Z80ASM that Udo Munk wrote that comes
      ; with Z80pack, and also Z80ASM for Linux available elsewhere.
      ; Which one will win the prize first and compile without tons of
      ; fatal errors? Udo Munk’s Z80asm won the prize. But not without a
      ; lot more work from me. Neither Z80ASM would take 8080 Assembler
      ; code, which is what Lawrence wrote this in. They wanted Z80
      ; Assembler Mnemonics and ways of doing things. So off to a trans-
      ; lator near you to try and switch it over. Lots more Unix utils
      ; used to switch things over, like the VI Editor.
      ;
      ; It also seemed that the Z80asm didn’t like certain length of
      ; LABELS in the program source code. They were not unique, it said.
      ; So fix that. And I still have 4 errors but it did compile to
      ; binary code. Both bin and hex files could be created. And they
      ; were. But something still seems to be wrong. The machine code
      ; that is generate does load into the sim machine. But it does not
      ; yet run. There still seems to be some bugs in a few spots where
      ; the Z80 machine code did NOT EQUAL the 8080 code? Or the hand
      ; code that you made? Did you really do this with no assembler?
      ; It’s awful strange how you came out with such a listing????
      ;——————————————————————-
      ; After much work re-assembling and trying to fix those errors -
      ; I finally figured out how to kill those 4 errors. 2 each were
      ; the same, The assembler seems to like “FF” in “00ffh” format,
      ; and the IN and OUT data, also “FF”’s had to be in parenthesis.
      ; Imagine all of that???? It loads ok now from a HEX file and
      ; your program works. The bin file? I might be still doing something
      ; wrong with that. But this has been a LONG NIGHT/MORNING.
      ;——————————————————————-
        ORG     0
;
      ;———————————–
      ; Initialise the register variables
      ;———————————–
;
        LD     C,00FFh
        LD     D,1
;
      ;—————————————–
      ; Move the recorded position of the light
      ;—————————————–
;
LOOP:   LD     A,D                   ; Load Position into Accumulator
        CP     128
        JP     Z,SWDIR               ; Position = 128?
        CP     1
        JP     NZ,MOVEPOS            ; Position != 1?
;
      ; Switch the direction of the light
;
SWDIR:  LD     A,C                   ; Load Direction into Accumulator
        CPL                          ; Compliment the accumulator
        LD     C,A                   ; Store result back in the Direction
MOVEPOS:LD     A,C                   ; Load Direction into Accumulator
        CP     0                     ; Direction != left?
        JP     NZ,MOVERT
;
      ; Move position Left
;
        LD     A,D                   ; Load Position into Accumulator
        RLA                          ; Rotate left
        LD     D,A                   ; Store result back in the Position
        JP     OUTPLGHT
;
      ; Move position Right
;
MOVERT: LD      A,D                  ; Load Position into Accumulator
        RRA                          ; Rotate right
        LD     D,A                   ; Store result back in Position
;
      ;———————————————–
      ; Output the light to PROGRAMMED OUTPUT display
      ;———————————————–
;
OUTPLGHT:    LD      A,D             ; Load Position into Accumulator
        CPL                          ; Compliment Accumulator due
                                     ; to way PROGRAMMED OUTPUT works
        OUT     (00FFh),A            ; Output to PROGRAMMED OUTPUT
;
      ;———————–
      ; User controlled Delay
      ;———————–
;
        IN      A,(00FFh)            ; User delay from PROGRAMMED INPUT
                                     ; port 0xFF
        INC     A                    ; Make sure 0 is minimum delay
DLYOUTR:LD      B,02                 ; Set register B loop delay to 2
DLYINR1:LD      E,00FFh              ; Set register E loop delay to 255
DLYINR2:DEC     E                    ; Decrement Register E
        JP     NZ,DLYINR2            ; Loop until Register E = 0
        DEC     B                    ; Decrement Register B
        JP     NZ,DLYINR1            ; Loop until Register B = 0
        DEC     A                    ; Decrement Accumulator
        JP     NZ,DLYOUTR            ; Loop until Register A = 0
;
      ;——————-
      ; Loop indefinitely
      ;——————-
;
        JP     LOOP

 END

[end of that program listing]

night-rider-program-z80.txt
Here is the Z80 Assembler Source Code for this program in a dowloadable file

The hex file that this compiles into looks like the following. If you just want to avoid having to assemble it and just create a text file with the following 3 lines … you can load this into the Z80pack Imsai 8080 Simulator with: ./imsaisim -xFilename (where filename is whatever name you give the file with these 3 lines in it:

:200000000EFF16017AFE80CA0F00FE01C21200792F4F79FE00C21E007A1757C321007A1F65
:1B002000577A2FD3FFDBFF3C06021EFF1DC22C0005C22A003DC22800C30400CE
:00000001FF

* And “loop indefinitely” which is what most programs do. There is a program or routine looping right now over and over waiting for you to move your mouse … waiting for you to click on something … waiting for you to push a key on your keyboard. And it won’t stop looping indefinately until you close/kill the program or shut down your computer - in the case of a big program (system of program(s)) called an Operating System.

* Anyway the bottom line is that I translated his 8080 assembler instructions in hexadecimal into equivalent Z80 assembler instructions with their idiosyncracies … debugged it, aligned it, defined it, and set the color on track. As RCA used to say. And made it into a “compileable” or as they say in this type of program “assembleable” assembly language program. I ran it through the Z80asm - assembler provided by Udo Munk in the Z80pack kit … and loaded it into the Imsai Simulator. And it worked!!!! So now it is easy to reload the program each time you start the Simulator by just adding -xProgramName to the command line of starting the simulator.

Here is new video that I shot about my accomplishment:




Z80Pack Imsai 8080 Simulator Assembler Hacks - By Alan Spicer

—

Alan Spicer Marine Telecom

http://www.marinetelecom.net and http://www.wifiyacht.net

+1 954-683-3426

communications @ marinetelecom.net

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8. September 2010 by admin.

Happy “Incorpaversary” to Google. And have a look at the current “trick” on the Classic Home page of Google.com. You won’t see this if you use iGoogle like I do. You have to click into the “Classic Home” link at the top.

 PC World http://www.pcworld.com/article/204923/whats_up_with_googles_bouncy_ball_logo.html?tk=nl_dnx_h_crawl broke the news to me. I hadn’t noticed it since I land on iGoogle by default with all of my gadgets in place.

—

Alan Spicer Marine Telecom

http://www.marinetelecom.net and http://www.wifiyacht.net

+1 954-683-3426

communications @ marinetelecom.net

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5. September 2010 by admin.

http://www.luxist.com/2010/09/03/octopus-yacht-attempts-the-northwest-passage/?goback=%2Egde_1386987_member_28811633

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed) Sep 3rd 2010 at 7:02PM

In California yacht watchers have been checking out the A yacht but far north a different yacht has been turning heads. CBC news says that the Octopus, Paul Allen’s megayacht, has shown up in the High Arctic hamlet of Pond Inlet, Nunavut, on its way through the Northwest Passage. The 413-foot yacht has filed plans to attempt the Northwest Passage with the Canadian Coast Guard. The yacht has a 59-foot tender and a remotely-operated submarine as well as a twin helicopter hangar and two helipads. Even for a yacht this well outfitted, the Northwest Passage can be dangerous. Many vessels have run aground in the Arctic waterway. Luckily the ship has a strengthened hull for navigating the Arctic waters. It’s not known if owner Paul Allen is on board, he’s had his hands full lately with a patent infringement lawsuit that has him taking on Apple, Google and Facebook.

 Luxury yacht turns heads in Arctic

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/north/story/2010/09/02/nunavut-arctic-luxury-yacht.html
One of the world’s most luxurious private yachts made an unexpected appearance recently in the High Arctic hamlet of Pond Inlet, Nunavut, on its way through the Northwest Passage.

The 126-metre-long mega-yacht Octopus was anchored for five days last week offshore from Pond Inlet, a remote community on the northern tip of Baffin Island.

Residents in the hamlet of about 1,300 said they saw no crew members or passengers in the community before the ship quietly departed on Monday.

“It looked like it was a very grandioso ship,” Colin Saunders, who works at the Pond Inlet hamlet office, told CBC News on Wednesday.

“When people found out that it was a private yacht, you know, that’s when some eyebrows were going up there.”

Officials with the Canadian Coast Guard have confirmed that the Octopus has filed plans to attempt the Northwest Passage.

Yacht sightings rare
High-end yachts are not a usual sight in Canada’s Arctic, where sealift cargo vessels and cruise ships are more common.

Valued at more than $100 million, the Octopus is owned by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, who launched the vessel in 2003.

The yacht comes with a swimming pool, a Jacuzzi hot tub and other amenities for the rich and famous, said Alyssa Haak, the mega-yacht editor for Power and Motoryacht magazine.

“There’s two helipads. One is a touch and go, where the helicopter can just land, let guests off and take off again,” Haak said. “And then there’s also a helipad with a garage, because you can’t leave your helicopter exposed to all that salt water.

“She also has room to store a sea plane and a submarine.”

The Octopus is currently ranked ninth on Power and Motoryacht’s list of the world’s 100 largest yachts.

In search of new luxury adventures
Haak said the wealthiest travellers are looking north these days, as they’ve become bored with cruising around the Mediterranean and Caribbean.

“The Med is getting more crowded,” she said. “People want to take their boats to new and different places.”

But the Northwest Passage can be treacherous for even the biggest and most advanced ships. Within the past week, two large vessels — including a cruise ship — have run aground in the fabled Arctic waterway.

In the case of the cruise ship, the MV Clipper Adventurer, its 128 passengers had to wait two days for a coast guard icebreaker to come and rescue them.

But Haak said passengers aboard the Octopus can rest easy knowing the ship has a strengthened hull that is well suited for Arctic waters.

“They can always get off easily, too, with the helicopter they have on board,” she added.

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/north/story/2010/09/02/nunavut-arctic-luxury-yacht.html#ixzz0ybHG5s4J

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Alan Spicer Marine Telecom

http://www.marinetelecom.net and http://www.wifiyacht.net

+1 954-683-3426

communications @ marinetelecom.net

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4. September 2010 by admin.

Internet Protocol version 6 is becoming more and more important as the IPv4 space dwindles away to nothing. The IPv4 space that we’ve all been so comfortable with is … running out. I almost don’t need to say that. The NEW WORLD will be quite a new situation to see. A sight for sore eyes to coin a phrase. Or not? Because everyone is so used to the IP addresses that have been the IPv4 space … the Internet World as it were. NAT has been a big champion for both saving IPv4 space as well as something called “Security by Obscurity”. In other words if you sit behind a NAT to local (RFC 1918) IP Addresses then it’s much harder to find you and explioit or compromise your computer.

IPv6 promises to make that much more difficult. There are a lot of details as to why but I’ll leave that to others to describe. YOU WILL be on IPv6 soon. Wether you choose to or like it or not. Many Cellular Companies are already using it. Which is why I had a question to my suppliers as to IF our gear was IPv6 capable. Not just from the simplest form … but on the ISP Connection level. If our Cellular ISP starts wanting to connect us using IPv6 Addresses can our gear handle that???? I haven’t got the right answer yet. I think it needs to come from higher up.

IPv4 used nice decimal - dotted - addresses. And we studied that for years to learn how to deal with that , including subnetting and superneting and CIDR as it came along. But IPv6 kind of changes the game a bit. A binary bit. A hexadecimal bit.

IPv4 addresses have been 32 bit. IPv6 addresses will be 128 bits. That’s twice the size of the current 64-bit personal computers computing size. Not that this is a problem. It is just a comparison.

IPv6 addresses will be given and discussed in Hexadecimal. Not many people, including some networking technicians are used to discussing things that way. Older programmers and some C and such programmers don’t see this as a problem.

I have been going back to school. Not because the kids have also went back to school after the summer. But because I needed to refresh my knowledge of numbering systems and re-understand hexadecimal.

So I have been going retro … back to the past … or back to the future … however you look at it. I have been playing around with some Altair 8800 and Imsai 8080 simulators. The reason is not purely for geek enjoyment, although the history of Apple Computer Co. and Microsoft Co. (Micro-Soft back then) is interesting, but the going back to the basics - hardware and software - of those simple machines just might make it easier to understand things like Octal and Hexadecimal. They just might be a good and cool and interesting tool to help with getting ready for IPv6. And they have totally been that for me.

Altair 32 Emulator in Windows and the latest Z80pack in Ubuntu Linux - with Altair and Imsai which includes and uses something called “FrontPanel”, are great places to start on such a journey. I didn’t say this was all easy either … but for the geek that wants to go retro, like I did, to freshen up on Hexadecimal (and Binary and Octal) to help them with IPv6 it just might be worthwhile.

Did I just say “Ooh Nix” instead of Unix?

—
Alan Spicer Marine Telecom
http://www.marinetelecom.net and http://www.wifiyacht.net
+1 954-683-3426
communications @ marinetelecom.net

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4. September 2010 by admin.

I thought this was interesting as well … also received via a ham radio email group message. I already knew that sea water made a very good ground plane (counterpoise) or whatever for antenna systems. This becomes very important at HF / SSB Radio frequencies on boats. The ground / counterpoise that is. Anyway here we go…

—
Alan Spicer Marine Telecom
http://www.marinetelecom.net and http://www.wifiyacht.net
+1 954-683-3426
communications @ marinetelecom.net

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