With enough studying, it’s pretty straightforward to get. In Canada, as in the US, it is no longer a requirement to pass a Morse code exam, so this simplifies things for sure. One thing that really helped me was the ExHAMiner program, which lets you practice taking the exam with the same questions that appear on the real exam.

Getting on the Air

Next step will be to actually get on the air. To start off, I’ve bought a very cheap handheld radio — the Baofeng UV-3R. For the price (around $50 – 60), it looks like an amazing deal, and I haven’t heard too many negative reviews of it.

Once I get my license certificate in the mail, I’ll also be checking out EchoLink. This software allows you to connect to other ham radio stations over the internet, even if you don’t have a radio transceiver. It does, however, require you to prove you have an amateur radio license.

I’ve also got a couple software-defined radio kits that I’ve been wanting to put together: the Softrock RXTX + Xtall v 6.3, and the 40m and 80m Lite II kits. The RXTX is a transceiver kit (meaning it can transmit and receive), so I won’t be able to use it until I get an Advanced license… but the Lite II kits I will be able to build and use. More info can be found on the Softrock-40 site.

Holders of the Basic Qualification may Build their own Transmitters!

Every time I read about the privileges for the Basic qualification, it said you’re not able to build your own transmitter. Well, it turns out you can build a transmitter as long as it is from a commercially available kit of professional design. The official publication from Industry Canada, RIC-3 – Information on the Amateur Radio Service, has a footnote in the qualifications section which indicates this. I’m not sure why this isn’t more widely known.

Other Resources

• Amateur Radio on Reddit
• 73s.com – a social network for hams
• Twitter
• Radio Amateurs of Canada (RAC)
• G4FON – the best Morse code training software I’ve found
• Become a Ham (in Canada)

Having to deal with repeated phone calls about how to do routine tasks started to get tiresome — for both myself and the client — so I started recording screencast videos of my in-person client training sessions. I’d explain that I would record the screen and audio while walking through each task, and recommend they hold their questions til the end of the recording (and assure that I would answer all questions or repeat anything they wanted).

Recording videos of the training sessions had two great benefits:

1. The client was left with a step-by-step video they could watch again and again. This led to less questions in the months ahead, or at least quicker answers: “ah, you’re looking for the video titled: adding a new page”
2. The training session was much more focused, as I could explain each task without interruption (often their over-eager questions were covered anyway). This saved time for everyone.

I started out using Camtasia, which is a really great tool for recording screencasts. A great feature it has is to zoom in on your mouse cursor — helpful for reading text labels. Unfortunately, the pricetag was a bit too much. After trying out a tool called FRAPS for recording demo videos for our games on the One Ocean website, I began using it to record my WordPress training sessions.

Some tips for recording screencasts with FRAPS:

• Set your screen resolution to about 1280 x 1024, or zoom in with your web browser. Otherwise, it will be hard to read text in the video.
• Use a headset or external microphone for less background noise.
• If you are using a mic built into your computer, use an external keyboard. Otherwise, the mic will pick up your keystrokes (much louder than you’d think!)
• For Windows 7, you must enable “Monitor Aero desktop (DWM)”
• Set to “Full-size” to ensure the best picture quality.
• You probably only need to record at 8 frames per second — this is sufficient for demonstrating web apps, and will keep the filesize down.
• Make sure to do a quick test run before starting your session. Test your microphone volume.

Now, FRAPS takes very high quality videos, so it’s normal that your videos will be a couple gigabytes. This makes it important to split your video tutorials into smaller chunks of less than 10 minutes — plus for the sake of the training session, it’s best to keep them short anyway.

Compression will be necessary after you’ve recorded the videos, and this was a task I found to be quite painful. Initially I was compressing them one by one with Windows Live Movie Maker. This went on for quite a while until I just didn’t have the time to waste, so I began searching for a better option.

I came across a couple great tutorials that showed me how to batch compress my FRAPS based videos:

• Compressing FRAPS avi file videos
• Setting up batch jobs to compress a series of videos

Using these instructions, I’ve been able to greatly simplify the process of compressing my WordPress and Drupal training videos, meaning I can get these materials to the client much faster.

So if you’re finding yourself having to explain things over and over, I’d definitely recommend making a training video. Once you have a good process down, it’ll save you time in the end.

We used some tuck tape to attach it to the bottom fin where the string is tied… but I should have put it nearer to the bottom because the the fin was in most of the shots.

I’ve seen suspension systems (which is called a Picavet Cross) for holding a platform parallel to the ground. Here’s a photo and a diagram.

Some people use timers, or a trigger to take the pictures, but we just used video mode. This worked pretty well because it let us go through and pick the best frames.

The camera has a very narrow angle of view, and we didn’t want to get the kite up too high, so a lot of the shots were just of grass. Managed to find a few where we’re in the frame though.

Unfortunately, the images are extremely blurry. I thought it was just because it’s a fairly cheap camera, but check out the picture of my shoe — it actually looks quite good. That led me to see whether the focus could be improved on the camera, and it turns out you can indeed adjust the focus.

Hopefully we have another windy day that’s not too cold before winter comes, and I can try out these improvements!

• Tropo documentation
• Example using the Web API
• Sinatra examples, using the Web API – great for setting up a quick project

I heard about the game jam from Devin Reimer, and even though I’d never touched flash before, I figured it was a great opportunity to get started in game development.  It was a great decision, and I learned a lot about the process of making games… I met some cool people in the process, too!

Luckily, I had some support from my boss Kevin Glasier and his wife Erica Glasier who are both graphic designers — they did all the graphics for the game, and it turned out really great! The game is called “the BeBop Room” and you can play it below (use the arrow keys to move and jump. Press Z and X to jam out)

More great games!

A lot of really talented game developers took part in the game jam — check out the So Many Rooms site to play all the games!

Pretty annoying considering all the lame tutorial stuff you need to endure at the beginning of the game. After a bit of googling, I found that it was because Viva Pinata was not able to create a gamer profile, and it seems it might be limited to Windows 7. Anyway, here are the steps I followed to correct the issue:

Saving your game in Viva Pinata – steps for fixing

1. Click the Start Button.
2. Select All Programs then select Accessories.
3. Right click on Command Prompt and select Run as administrator.
4. The Command Prompt window will appear.
5. Type the following, and press Enter: net stop cryptsvc
6. Click the Start Button
7. In the textbox titled “Search programs and files”, type the following and press enter: %systemroot%/inf
8. Select all files starting with “OEM” and drag these onto your desktop (or into any other folder on your desktop. Really we just want to move these out of the Windows folder)
9. In the Command Prompt window, type the following and press enter: net start cryptsvc
10. Restart your computer.
11. Now, when you start Viva Pinata, it will ask you to log into Windows Live.
12. You can now save your game.

Please leave a comment below, or contact me if these instructions worked for you!

More great games

Check out more kid and family friendly games here…

<United States>
AL|Alabama (AL)
AK|Alaska (AK)
AZ|Arizona (AZ)
AR|Arkansas (AR)             
CA|California (CA)
CO|Colorado (CO)
CT|Connecticut (CT)
DE|Delaware (DE)
DC|District of Columbia (DC)    
FL|Florida (FL)
GA|Georgia (GA)
GU|Guam (GU)
HI|Hawaii (HI)
ID|Idaho (ID)
IL|Illinois (IL)
IN|Indiana (IN)
IA|Iowa (IA)
KS|Kansas (KS)
KY|Kentucky (KY)
LA|Louisiana (LA)
ME|Maine (ME)
MD|Maryland (MD)
MA|Massachusetts (MA)
MI|Michigan (MI)
MN|Minnesota (MN)
MS|Mississippi (MS)
MO|Missouri (MO)
MT|Montana (MT)
NE|Nebraska (NE)
NV|Nevada (NV)
NH|New Hampshire (NH)
NJ|New Jersey (NJ)
NM|New Mexico (NM)
NY|New York (NY)
NC|North Carolina (NC)
ND|North Dakota (ND)
OH|Ohio (OH)
OK|Oklahoma (OK)
OR|Oregon (OR)
PA|Pennyslvania (PA)
PR|Puerto Rico (PR)
RI|Rhode Island (RI)
SC|South Carolina (SC)
SD|South Dakota (SD)
TN|Tennessee (TN)
TX|Texas (TX)
UT|Utah (UT)
VT|Vermont (VT)
VA|Virginia (VA)
VI|Virgin Islands (VI)
WA|Washington (WA)
WV|West Virginia (WV)
WI|Wisconsin (WI)
WY|Wyoming (WY)
<Canada>
AB|Alberta (AB)
BC|British Columbia (BC)
MB|Manitoba (MB)
NB|New Brunswick (NB)
NL|Newfoundland and Labrador (NL)
NT|Northwest Territories (NT)
NS|Nova Scotia (NS)
NU|Nunavut (NU)
PE|Prince Edward Island (PE)
SK|Saskatchewan (SK)
ON|Ontario (ON)
QC|Quebec (QC)
YT|Yukon (YT)

French Names of Canadian Provinces:

<Canada>
AB|Alberta
BC|Colombie-Britannique
MB|Manitoba
NB|Nouveau-Brunswick
NL|Terre-Neuve-et-Labrador
NT|Territoires du Nord-Ouest
NS|Nouvelle-Écosse
NU|Nunavut
PE|Île-du-Prince-Édouard
SK|Saskatchewan
ON|Ontario
QC|Québec
YT|Yukon

I’m a couple hours into Fable 3, and I have to say I’m pretty disappointed. Where Fable 2 was very customizable, and open-ended, I’m finding Fable 3 is far too simple. In this post, I’ll be talking about some of the things I really dislike about this game… but first, some of the things that Fable III got right:

Fable III – The Good

Menu system

Selecting a weapon in the sanctuary

Surprisingly, I liked the menu system… or the lack of one, really. The new Fable has done away with the traditional menu system. Your clothing and weapons are accessed by transporting to your ‘sanctuary’ where you can physically pick your items. The character upgrade menu has also been replaced with ‘the road to rule’, which is a road with gates and treasure chests which are unlocked by your experience points.

The benefit of this type of ‘menu’ is that everything is in character — you’re never really taken out of the game. This is a good way of keeping the player immersed in the game. Unfortunately, they’ve needed to hugely simplify weapons, inventory, and spellcasting in order to accomplish this.

Multiplayer

I haven’t had a chance to play Fable in multiplayer, but from what I’ve read there have been massive improvements on this. This feature in Fable II was very rudimentary — it was basically like playing the Tails character in Sonic the Hedgehog.

Environment and character design

The mini games are a nice distraction. Glad I'm not colourblind though!

As expected, the game really shines here. Buildings, characters, weapons, ships… all these are designed to really immerse you in the world of Albion. It’s been a few decades since the events of the last game, so technology has advanced to include a lot of steam powered machines.

Voice acting

There are lots of big name voices in this sequel — John Cleese, Sir Ben Kingsley, Simon Pegg, among others. The non-player character (NPC) voices are all very well done, and you get to actually hear your character speak in Fable 3 (you only heard non-word sounds from the hero in Fable 2)

Fable III – The Bad

Gestures

There are some pretty funny animations for the actions you can make your character do… but damned if I know how to actually perform them. When you interact with townsfolk, you only get a choice of a good or bad action, and to perform that action, you just hold down either the A or B button. Far simpler than Fable 2′s interface where you had to hold and release the button with exact timing… but also very boring.

Simplistic inventory

As mentioned before, the inventory is incredibly simple compared to Fable 2. No longer are there dozens of food types, weapons and gifts. You can carry one type of food, and who knows what gifts you’re carrying…. I’m guessing they show up in your treasure room. Part of the charm of Fable was all the funny types of food, and it’s crazy but I really liked carrying around all kinds of meat pies, fish, and celery!

Good/evil system

In Fable III, playing as an evil character really doesn’t make much sense. The story revolves around you being the good guy, and your brother being the bad guy, so playing as an evil character is hard to reconcile with the story. I feel guilty if I steal and kill — a good prince would never do such a thing!

So which is better, Fable 3 or Fable 2?

In my opinion, Fable 2 is a far better game. Even though Lionhead Studios spent a lot of time trying to make the game more immersive, it felt like the opposite. Because the actions are so limited, and the game pressures you to take the ‘good’ path, it’s like you’re just watching a movie and occasionally pressing the A button.

If you haven’t played either Fable 2 or 3 yet and are wondering which one to get, I encourage you to buy Fable 2 — much cheaper now, and a far better game overall.

The affordable, featureless Motorola F3

So after finding out that my trusty old Nokia 6085 wasn’t waterproof, I was in the market for a new cellphone. I’d had the Nokia for about 3 years, without a single problem. I think this had to do with the fact that it’s a very basic phone, even for its time. I chose it solely based on its great battery life, and low price.

I debated getting a smartphone, but didn’t think I could justify the monthly expenst… and I wasn’t sure if I’d even use the fancy features. So, I looked into getting an unlocked phone. It seemed like a bit of a risk just buying a phone off the internet, and hoping it’d work with my carrier (Rogers)… But everything turned out better than expected :)

I decided on an unlocked Motorola F3 because of a couple special features:

• Superb battery life
• eInk display

And have been able to live without the following features:

• Colour display
• Graphics
• Full alphanumeric display
• Camera
• Web browsing
• MP3 player
• Etc!!!

Yikes! Sort of the antithesis of the modern cellphone! I’d done some research into this phone before buying it, and I read that it had been made for developing countries. Well, that explains the great battery life — in fact, Motorola even did some research into bicycle powered chargers, and I read about a solar powered version on Instructables. Plus, the eInk display is really great on battery life, since it doesn’t require constant battery power for its display — only when the graphics need to change.

The eInk display is quite limited however — imagine an old LCD watch display. It is only able to display six characters at a time, making its user interface quite limited. Motorola’s answer to this was to have the phone speak out its user interface, rather than displaying it on the screen. Another benefit of the spoken menus is that it makes the phone usable for the illiterate — perfect for developing countries. Really, this phone was designed for talking, and little else.

Probably the feature I miss the most on the Motorola F3 is any kind of predictive, dictionary based texting. Typing out words, letter at a time, is very tedious. Whereas with my Nokia I would fully spell out my messages, along with proper capitalization and punctuation, with the F3 I text like a teenage girl… out of necessity :|

There is no standard ‘settings’ menu on the F3. The interface allows you to change the ringtone, alarm time, date/time, and that’s it! Any other settings on the phone need to be modified through a series of impossible to remember key commands. If you’re interested in knowing more about these settings, as well as some undocumented ones, check out the Wikipedia page on the Motorola F3.

Anyway, I think it’s a neat little phone with a lot of character. People seem to assume it’s an expensive phone, because of its size… little do they know I bought it for about $30!

Photo credit: Rotary phone image by Cesar Bojorquez

• RichMarker for Google Maps – a new google maps library for styling placemarks using arbitrary HTML. This greatly simplifies making fancy placemarks, so you’re not just limited to using an icon for a placemark (could use a thumbnail, text summary, or pie graph instead, for example)
  - via @xavijam
• Using Fusion Tables with Google Maps – Ruby developer Simon Tokumine has created a gem for interacting with Google Fusion Tables. His example displays georeferenced tweets on a map.
  - via @tokumin
• SimpleGeo – a simple, geospatial API.
• GeoCommons – an online app that provides a simple way to create maps based on their library of data, or external sources. eg: a simple map based on the Winnipeg Beer Vendor points on Google Maps.
• Ushahidi – a crowdsourced method of displaying crisis information on maps.
• GreenP parking finder – a great example of a simple and clean spatial web app.
• OpenLayers – an alternative to Google Maps.
• GIS Stack Exchange – based on the popular StackExchange site, this one is for asking questions related to GIS.
• Promoting your Google Earth tour – some methods for letting people know about a google earth tour you’ve created.

Globe photo by Boliston on Flickr