I saw an article on Wired today:
The Lost Tribes of RadioShack. It is well worth the read even if you re not into electronics. A key quote:
[H]is shop is a lone outpost; in a single generation, the American who built, repaired, and tinkered with technology has evolved into an entirely new species: the American who prefers to slip that technology out of his pocket and show off its killer apps. Once, we were makers. Now most of us are users.
I remember as a kid eagerly awaiting each year s new
RadioShack catalog. I d read them pretty much cover to cover for fun. And who wouldn t? The catalogs had fun things like radios, telephone gadgets, calculators, tape recorders, electronic lab kits , books, components, LEDs I loved the catalogs and loved the store.
My parents bought me a electronic kit (if memory serves 20 years later, it s the deluxe 160-project electronic kit from page 156 of the
1988 catalog, though it may have been purchased a different year). I had endless fun with that thing. It had resistors, diode, capacitors, oscillator, speaker, LED, relay, etc plenty to make a bunch of
kid-friendly projects.
Just looking at the catalog makes me excited even today. On the next page from the kit I had is a $5 crystal radio kit which needs no power source Solderless. With earphone, instructions, theory. On page 28 there was a revolving red light, and some microcassette recorders on p. 36 (I had one of those for awhile).
I had enthusiasm for building and figuring out things for a long time. My dad let me take apart an old lawn mower for fun once I m sure he knew ahead of time it would never be back together. One of his friends from work built homemade contraptions out of things like an old vacuum cleaner (attach a cardboard tube to the exhaust and you get a great tennis ball shooter). And there was always all sorts of fun junk to discover up in the barn.
I eventually shifted to a different sort of making things : programming. It has kept me busy for quite a number of years.
But the Wired article has a point. RadioShack is struggling. Many people have no interest in making or fixing things anymore. The best-selling smartphone in the world comes sealed in a metal case where not even the battery can be replaced, the software is dictated by a company in California, and good luck trying to program for it without signing your life away first. A far cry from the first computer I used, a TRS-80 Color Computer II, bought, yes, at RadioShack. Turn it on, and in a few seconds you get a BASIC prompt. Can t really use it without programming. Being able to read its manual was an early motivation for me to work at learning to read.
It is sad that so many devices can t be worked on anymore, and that so many people don t care. It is difficult for me to give Jacob (and later, Oliver) the sort of experience I had as a child. Companies would love to sell us $50 DVD sets, $300 educational game systems, $40 educational games, and any number of $30 plastic toys (some of which we have and the boys enjoy).
I d rather give him a $10 bag of resistors, capacitors, wire, battery holders, LEDs, and a book, and see what he can come up with (when he s a bit older, of course). And, in fact, he and I
built his first computer together. We installed the ultimate in operating systems for tinkering: Linux.
This all brings me back to RadioShack. I ve been working on ham radio lately, with an eye to that being a project for Jacob (age 3.5), Oliver (just turned 1), and me to enjoy in the future. I needed some cable, and had been told by many people to visit the
RadioShack in Derby, KS. It s like the one mentioned in the Wired article: huge, selling everything from washing machines to bulk cable, except this one specializes in amateur radio.
I asked Jacob if he would like to come with me to a radio store. Dad, I would LOVE that! He brought his little
semi-broken walkie-talkies with him to use during the hour drive there. At one point, he was concerned that a radio store is like a library and he might have to leave them on a shelf. I assured him he could keep them.
We got to the RadioShack and he loved it. He couldn t even really contain his excitement. He ran back and forth along the bright green stripe running down the middle of the carpet. He excitedly watched them measure out 60ft of RG-8 coax for me. He pushed buttons on the demo clothes dryer, looked at all the antennas, and just had a great time.
And he s been interested in my radio, too. When I was talking to somebody on it the other day, he said, I think he is at the radio store. He is having fun there. Right now, everybody I talk to on the radio is at the radio store to him. Jacob loves the fact that the backlight on my FT-857D can change colors, and often comes into the office just so I can put it into setup mode and let him spin the big wheel to change the colors. He enjoys opening boxes of components, and came out to help (and run around) while I suspended a dipole from some trees last Friday.
I had told Jacob when we got to the store that This radio store is called RadioShack. He obviously took that to heart, because now if he hears me talking about a radio store , he will say, Dad, actually it is radio SHACK.
So I say thank you to the Derby RadioShack for keeping the magic of making things with your dad alive for another generation.
The unofficial rc bug tracker
currently knows about the following bugs:
Joe Hansen reported the Debian 
I've been interesting in running Linux upon my router for a long
time, but I never had a really compelling reason to do so. The potential
for brickage was always too high to make me want to experiment for the
sake of it.
However last night I installed 
Dpkg got rid of Perl
Let s start with the interesting part and the great news: dpkg 1.15.8 (to be uploaded soon) will no longer need perl! After my 
The other projects that will never all fit in the freed time: I want to spend more time working on dpkg. I do plan to blog more often too, but I m sure you ll notice that yourself soon. I would like to see my Debian book translated into English (another post coming on the topic sometimes soon). In my dreams, I could even start yet another software project, I have some ideas that I really would like to see implemented but I don t see how that could fit in this year s planning unless I can convince someone else to implement them! Maybe I should blog about them.
Like one or two years ago, I got myself a free Dropbox account. I use it
occasionally to exchange files with some friends. It does an excellent job
at that. Basically, it works like any network folder. Except it is not within
a local network, but over the internet.Dropbox serves me as an occasional replacement for both email and USB
pen drive. Instead of sending a modified file by email or bringing around
a dozen of photos on a USB stick, I just put them into the shared folder.
This also very useful for files such as flyers, templates. They may easily
grow to big to be sensibly sent by email.For all my use, a regular 
* Testing needed from more people. Feel free to break your working gwibber with, 
Just bought me an external flashlight; a Nikon Speedlight SB-900,
which is Nikon's top model. It wasn't as expensive as that sounds,
though, since this was their demo model that they got me a good discount
on, on top of the already rather low prices that this shop offers; this
made it cheaper than the list price of the SB-600, Nikon's second-best
model.
I'm afraid it will take a while before I'll be able to fully
understand its features, though. I did get a course at photography when
I was about 13 years old, which did help me in picking up again how to
work with an SLR camera when I bought it. But that course never included
anything about using flashlights; and while I do understand how bouncing
light off of walls and other things may sometimes help in getting the
picture just right, I haven't actually ever done that. So I
guess I'll be practicing a bit, now...
Landau, L. D.; Lifshitz, E. M. (1976). Course of Theoretical Physics is still the most interesting and solid base that is to be considered as a reference and inspiration in Theoretical Physics.
The reference for "Classical Electrodynamics" is the book by J.D. Jackson. "Advanced Quantum Mechanics" by J.J. Sakurai is a popular student choice. 
As part of the 11th Debian Conference in New York City, USA, there will be OpenPGP (pgp/gpg) keysignings. If you intend to participate in the DebConf10 keysignings, please send your ascii armored public key 
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