Tue, 29 Jun 2004

Vacation Time
My wife has family up in Alaska, and we usually come up during the summer. I slotted two weeks near the end of June and we went up. Baby and my dad also came up with me so he could enjoy the sights and also meet some of my wife's family.

The first stop was Fairbanks, AK. This is located in the middle of the state, and is subject to some of the most extreme temperature ranges on the planet: -60F in the winter, 99F in the summer. Since it was summer, and the sun was up nearly the entire day, we saw temperatures of about 100F on the deck.

The most notable incident in the world of wireless and communications was a nasty ACS fibercut that severed communications abroad. My Sprint roaming provider, Sparks/Digitel, went hard down (not even a signal) for about 4 days. I was roaming on ACS's network at the time, and even though Sprint claims to have a roaming agreement with these guys, my phone did not function. So much for Free & Clear "America".

After meeting with family and doing touristy things in the area, our next stop was Barrow. This is located at the top of the state, on the Arctic Ocean coast. It is also the most northern city/point/anything in North America at 71 degrees latitude. We also took my mother-in-law.

We were up here to show off the baby, meet family, and check out town. We also came up here for Nalukataq, or more commonly known as the Eskimo Blanket Toss.

It was my first time to the North Slope, and it looks like I couldn't pick a better time to be up there. The weather was great. We were treated to blue skies and temperatures im used to back at home (40-50F). Not to mention the fact that the sun never set -- it just circled near the top of the sky.

Barrow is several miles long, very similar to a typical 1-2 story urban area, and then thats it. It is very flat -- you can see to the horizon in all directions. There are no trees, only grass on the tundra. In the summer, the town is surrounded by breathtaking views of the Arctic coast, bird formations, grass and oval lakes.

One of the most notible aspects of Barrow was the people. They were very friendly and community oriented. People were not in a hurry, selfish or materalistic. This was not certainly not Seattle. While English is spoken in Barrow, Inupiat make considerable usage of their native tounge: Inupiaq.

Just like anywhere else in the United States, electrical, water, medical, telephone, cable TV, and internet are all available. Communications served via satellite. There is a neat satellite array outside of town with a series of dishes pointing downward. Some of the equator satellite paths are fragle, and all it takes is a passing vehicle or a stupid flock of birds to kill the link margin and cause breakup on the local cable system.

Construction is a little tricky, as the land is a little marshy in the summer and permafrost underneath the dirt. Pre-manufactured housing on stilt frames are very commonplace, as shipping building materials is cost prohbitive for most people. And no, there are no igloos in Barrow.

The only pavement was the airport runway. All I can say is that I loved driving there...nobody wears seatbelts, and dirt and gravel roads are fun to slide on. There are a lot of automobiles, but just as many fourwheelers running around....its too bad we did not end up borrowing one..

Since there are no roads into Barrow, shipping of goods is an expensive issue. Everything is sent airfreight, now even more difficult due to 9/11 policy, and this comes out to be about a $1/lb. This inflates local prices to comical amounts when compared to the inexpensive goods of the lower 48. A yearly barge service is available for perhaps $0.25/lb to ship items that are either too large or cost prohibitive to send via aircraft. Barrow is served twice a day, yearround by passenger aircraft, some of which have half the space allocated for cargo (737-300C). Cargo aircraft also routinely service Barrow.

There is really only one store in Barrow (Stuqpak) owned by UIC. This is more of a general store with produce, grocieries, food court, clothing, etc. They had espresso, and that's all I cared about. We also bought the baby a very cute outfit to wear.

The radio station, KBRW, is a great example of how community radio is supposed to work. This station features localized content and fosters community involvement. Its amazing how simple it is to do this, and how many radio dials lack its content. The local cable system features several local content channels.

After a few days of being shown around town, playing on the beach, and resting, it was time for Nalukataq on Monday, June 21st. Everyone spent days getting ready for the occasion. Cakes, eskimo ice cream, eskimo doughnuts, stew, and whale was prepared.

Nalukataq took place in the center of town. This is a feast and consists of food distribution, dance, and play. It drizzled a few times, no different than back at home. My wife put the baby in her parka (Amaaq). People still do this and its a great way to keep babies warm (..and as an added benefit, they go to sleep instantly!)

It was Maggie's first time Amaaq-ing and one time we didn't quite tighten the belt enough. I was walking behind and suddenly saw two legs standing up, the rest of the body was up the parka. She fell all the way down!! I wish I would have taken a picture.

As you already know, the Eskimos eat whale, raw almost like sushi. It is extremely fresh and tasty. They use every last bit of it to: skin, blubber, meat, blood, organs, baleen, even the gums. But maktak is a delicacy. This is a half and half cut of blubber and skin. Its a little chewy and tastes almost like walnuts to me. It goes good with salt.

And while the Eskimos still hunt whale for sustenance, the government limits them to a certain amount. With these limitations, they cannot entirely live off it alone....they can at least suppliment part of it.

After food distribution and cake, we went home for a little while, and came back for the blanket toss. And people get a little crazy on this blanket. Its amazing how much height you can get! It was lots of fun watching people fly into the air until there was an accident. Two people collided (forehead to jaw) and one landed on his head on the ground. He was quickly hauled out by an ambulance. There was concern he broke his back, but I was told later he ended up ok.

After a couple days, we headed out and left for Seattle. We pretty much flew all day, with a significant layover in Fairbanks.

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Sun, 06 Jun 2004

Fun With Modems
I have been trying to find a device to connect my modem to my cell phone, to use while in AMPS mode. I have a handsfree jack, which may or may not provide enough audio pass for data. As far as I have found, no such device exists.

Why would I want to mess with AMPS or a modem? Well, I sometimes go into roaming areas, and my 1xRTT data will not work. I need another solution, and AMPS is the only solution which will transport my data. Circuit switched data on roaming providers is not possible, and modems do not work over vocoders on the likes of digital networks (ie, CDMA, GSM). Since I have unlimited off-peak and unlimited roaming, data should be quite inexpensive.

Since the modem is 2 wire, and the handsfree is 4 wire, I would need a hybrid transformer. This splits/combines transmit and receive pairs. I would also need to make sure it was matched, as well as provide voltage on the modem side so it can be happy.

But screw all that, I figured out something a little simpler. I can always find a phone jack. But then long distance becomes an issue...or does it?

Nearly all roaming providers let me 3-way call. So, in CDMA, I 3-wayed the modem land line and a free dialup provider (nocharge.com), which was long distance. I typed in ATD on the modem, hit mute on the cell, and waited for a connect. The handshake went crazy, and failed. It was almost as if both modem sessions were going through a vocoder---but i thought three way calls were at toll rate (64k) on the network? I guess Sprint is doing some tricky stuff.

So I threw the phone into AMPS, made a 3 way call, used my ATD trick, and put the phone into mute. This time i worked. Apparently, putting the phone into mute wasn't the only thing i needed to do while in AMPS. The phone needed to be in a good coverage spot in the house (no static noises) because apparently mute is a phone/handset feature, not a network feature.

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Fri, 04 Jun 2004

IBSS "Infections"
I have noticed something really interesting about our expanding WiFi environment. A lot of work laptops have built-in WiFi and Windows XP. Windows XP, by default, looks for any available WiFi AP and associates to it.

But what happens if that is an IBSS association? Well, it looks like it just stays in it indefinitely, until further user action is made (ie: force new association, profile change, etc).

By walking around with an IBSS radio, you can make a whole bunch of IBSS nodes with the same SSID. They never bother to change their names.

Its a bit annoying because it made a peer-to-peer session act erratically when one third party associated to my IBSS at random with one particular default -- requiring a WEP key. My second peer did not want to associate without WEP (obviously because the third party wanted WEP), and it destroyed my IBSS.

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Tue, 01 Jun 2004

Voom Network Invents Lame HD Content
Voom, a "high definition" satellite network that claims to offer the most HD content, has some pretty amazing offerings as of late.

If you just can't get enough of 24/7 of tenis in HIGH DEFINITION, you'll love the AuctionHD channel. Thats right! 24 hours a day of auctions -- in 1920x1080! Wow...how stunning. And if that isn't enough, i'm sure you'll get kicks out of GalleryHD -- a cycling of paintings in high resolution.

What a bunch of crap ... why would I want to pay $80/mo for this garbage? It seems that HD content is extremely hard to come by, and these offerings make this very apparent.

However, if you couldn't get enough of the hard core porn between showings of Shriek on HBO, you'll love Playboy Hot HD..another new offering....ugh.

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