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Are.na
Secret project
This is where I’m tracking the progress of my secret project.
For now, almost no one except J. knows what it is, but it’s going pretty well.
inb4 - no, it’s not a pregnancy ;)
Stream
Loose thoughts, everyday life, and things in progress.
A kind of brain dump.
I finally took the AMS apart and it turned out to be beyond repair. I mean, maybe it could be fixed, but it would be expensive and complicated, and I still wouldn’t have any guarantee that the same thing wouldn’t happen again.
The story is that some time ago I bought a calcium chloride-based dehumidifier and put it inside the AMS because it was cheap and I didn’t know that, as it pulls moisture from the air, it turns into... brine.
I only found out once everything inside was already wet.
I tried to dry and clean the AMS, but it’s not that simple. The brine doesn’t absorb very well, so in practice I’d have to remove all the electronics, thoroughly wash and rinse all the plastic with water, and replace every part the salt had already reached and started corroding. So at least the motherboard and some of the internal wiring. In my opinion, it would still be risky to leave any of the electronics in there because I can’t rinse them out, and I’d risk some salt being left somewhere and eventually damaging the new electronics too. So unfortunately, the AMS was a write-off, and yesterday I simply ordered a new one. That has its upsides too, because the new version of the AMS is only a little more expensive and already has a built-in dryer. Oh well, lessons cost money.
Meanwhile, I put together a notification system that lets my agents notify me through Pushover. ChatGPT always sends me a notification when it finishes working, but I have a few automations that do something every day, and I don’t always feel like wasting time reviewing them. And ChatGPT itself doesn’t let an agent message me only when something happens that actually requires my attention. So, with Codex, I built an MCP that agents can use to send me a notification through the Pushover app. Simple, cheap (I’ll only pay about PLN 20 once for the phone app), and I have exactly what I need.
I've started doing a bit more with 3D printing, so we'll see what comes of it. One of the reasons I came back to it was that I started worrying that PIP might decide my business is effectively regular employment, convert it into an employment contract, and make me pay huge taxes. So I officially expanded my business to include 3D printing, and even if I don't end up doing many prints, they give me some protection, plus a bit of extra fun and income on the side.
I did my first order for my friend F., and I thought I'd leave it at that, just doing occasional orders for friends. But an opportunity to print something for someone I know from Twitter quickly came up, and although it was a small order, including making a simple model, it gave me hope that maybe other people will want to use my printer too, even if I can only make simple things.
I've already taken a few steps to get my printing operation organized. I now have an order form and a record of orders without invoices, and I also bought filament bags and silica gel to keep the filament dry. Now I'm printing silica gel containers so I can conveniently put it into those bags. I still need to fix the AMS, because in an attempt to save money on silica gel, I put some dehumidifier from Action into it... What I didn't know was that when it absorbs moisture from the air, it turns into brine. Now, even after drying out, the AMS doesn't work, or at least the printer doesn't detect it. I want to see if it can be repaired or figure out exactly what isn't working. Maybe I'll be able to buy a replacement part instead of a whole new AMS.
We came back from vacation. We were in Silesia and Kraków. I managed to make some QSOs with people from there, including two contest stations, although not enough to actually get an award. Kraków doesn’t have FM-LINK like Łódź does, but it does have an ECHOLINK gateway that you can connect to from the app, so I made a few QSOs through that gateway with people who were connecting through the app.
I'm quite pleased with myself because I'm really making the most of my interest in amateur radio and learning a lot. Thanks to that enthusiasm, studying comes easily to me. I've organized Anki flashcards for learning the NATO phonetic alphabet, Q codes, and exam topics I need to memorize, such as which frequencies in specific bands are allowed for amateurs.
I took the radio to the seaside, picked up a few transmissions, and decided it was pretty cool and that I’d like to transmit myself, so I signed up for the exam on August 10. At the same time, I started working through the exam questions. I’m making flashcards and stuff. With a bit of momentum and my usual short-lived enthusiasm, there’s a chance I might actually pull it off.
So I ended up buying the Baofeng UV-5RM Plus after all. I had some reservations about whether it was worth buying a Baofeng radio, because apparently they’re low quality, but I can see that quite a few people use them and even have good things to say about them. They’re not particularly expensive either, so maybe they’ll be good enough for learning.