National Cyber Strategy of the United States of America

In case you’ve not heard about it, the White House released the PDF – National Cyber Strategy of the United States of America.

I’ve not read through the whole thing, the intro starts out with

America’s prosperity and security depend on how we respond to the opportunities and challenges in cyberspace. Critical infrastructure, national defense, and the daily lives of Americans rely on computer-driven and interconnected information technologies. As all facets of American life have become more dependent on a secure cyberspace, new vulnerabilities have been revealed and new threats continue to emerge.

Looks like a document worth understanding.

It defines four pillars for a national approach to cyber-security:

1. Protect the American People, the Homeland, and the American Way of Life
2. Promote American Prosperity
3. Preserve Peace through Strength
4. Advance American Influence

It will be interesting to see how the impacts of actions along these lies will be measured and felt — something technologists should watch.

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Crafting a Cantilevered Wine Holder

You’ve likely seen these around:

Cantilevered wine holders are a decorative way to display a bottle. We were doing a fund-raising activity, so I made a number of these and decided to document in detail the process to build the wine holder. Only a few bottles were killed during the creation of this document

If you make one, let me know. If you see anything you’d do differently, I’d like to hear about that too.

Life lessons learned

The other day I was asked a question: If you were to tell a group of students what key takeaways you would have to share, what would they be?

I thought for a moment and replied:

1)      Listen – You’ll never learn unless you listen to what’s being said and going on around you. The answer is not always ‘yes’ and that’s one of the reasons iterative development is so prevalent. The more you listen, internalize and appreciate, the greater opportunity to understand even more.

2)      Continue to sharpen the sword – Today, the word is ever changing. Everyone needs to keep learning and improving. There are always new areas to explore and skills to develop. Besides, it keep life interesting too.

3)      Leaders must have followers – If you want o be a be a leader, you need to cultivate your network. One great way to have support, is to first support others. The concept of the servant leader can be critical. Closely related to being a leader, is the need to always have an opinion. It may not always be right, but you will never be able to validate your perspective unless you actually state it – and then listen to other’s perspective. It is better to hop on and help steer, rather than to stand-in-the-way of progress.

That was a quick, stream of consciousness perspective. I’d be interested in your view of lessons learned about self-development you’d share with others.

Laser scribing for Woodworking

Recently, I’ve started a new area of experimentation – laser scribing inserts for woodworkers. Below are a few examples of my initial efforts:

These are one inch wooden slugs that have been laser scribed with an image and some text.  My neighbor and I invested in this device together and in order to get our investment back, we’re planning to charge $1.50 per wooden coin for those using an existing design. If someone wants their own graphic, they can send it to me. It will be an additional $15 (one time) for me to set it up. If they want exclusive use of that graphic, it will be $20.

Embedding a wooden coin like this into the back of a project can really set it off and show the pride in your work.

It has been a crazy month

Since the last time I blogged, I have become a board member and performing the role of Advanced Training Director of the Sun City Hilton Head Woodworking and Modelmakers Guild. These are volunteer positions, but that doesn’t mean they don’t keep me busy.

There are over 800 members of the guild. We are in the process of rolling out Eventbrite to manage the scheduling of our training classes. By my best estimate (just for Advanced Training), there are approximately 140 training sessions, across 45 classes and 25 unique topics, before the end of the year. It’s a pretty active group.

A simple, collapsible, decorative wood bowl

Since I’ve moved to Sun City Hilton Head, I’ve done a great deal more woodworking than I have every done before. I’ve modeled most of these efforts in SketchUp or Microsoft 3D Builder before tackling anything too difficult.

The following are a couple of simple designs I’ve created for those getting started in woodworking. They look interesting, without being too complicated.

One is a Pineapple shaped bowl and the other is a bowl shaped like a Pumpkin. Both use the same technique to use a single piece of wood (about an inch thick) to form the handle and a spiral cut piece that can be expanded to form a bowl. When made properly, the piece can me laid flat or expanded into a bowl. Pegs can be used to attach the handle to the bowl.

Here is the Pineapple:

I’ve found it works best to print the design on an 11×17 piece of paper. Tape it to the board. Cut out the design with a scroll saw or sabre saw. Then align the parts and determine where the holes need to be cut for the pegs, so the handle can fully extend and expand the bowl. You may need to cut the handle down to fit.

Here is the Pumpkin (I am going to try this one on an 8 1/2 x 11 sheet of paper):

Here is what an Apple bowl looks like fully extended – my wife got that when she was teaching and it inspired me to create the other designs.

Field Day 2018

The Sun City Hilton Head amateur radio group had its annual field day event, consisting of the normal equipment setup, some operations and tear down. We had the usual comradery of a group lunch and discussion of the various new modes and old field day recollections from across the globe. One of the great things of a group with such a diverse experience base has is the range of stories they can tell. That photo shows one of the 4 operating positions we had set up.

The ARRL section representative and his assistance stopped by and stayed for quite a while, adding their stories to our oral anthology.

We had the ‘normal’ issues of operating interference and antenna. I had to dig out an old G5RV, when one of our verticals wouldn’t tune up right. We had this new antenna up and operational in less than 15 minutes. By the time we were done stringing antenna wires between the trees, it looked like a spider had been busy out there. We had three wire antennas and a buddipole working. Not bad since it was in the mid-90s that day.

One thing that surprised me (since I was operating digital modes) was the few number of field day operators across the globe who had not figured out how to operate FT8 for field day – that was frustrating! Hopefully by next year, the minor changes will be made to make the mode work for this event more naturally. Eventually, I switched over to the faithful PSK31 and RTTY. The group operated for a few hours and then packed everything up. 

On Sunday, I operated for a few more hours from home and racked up 100 contacts and was happy with that result.

Since the overall goals were:

• Emergency preparedness
• Work as many stations as possible
• Comradery
• No one gets hurt (I was the safety officer)

 We can met those objectives and can mark it down as a success.