04:25 <Pyrrh> I'm pretty sure ec is no longer speaking to me because appalled xD

04:26 <Pyrrh> <--- persona non grata

04:26 <ljharb> Pyrrh: appalled at what

04:26 <Pyrrh> APPARENTLY

04:26 <ec> what

04:26 <Pyrrh> radio waves are made of light

04:26 <ec> no, my phone died

04:26 <ec> :P

04:26 <Pyrrh> lol

04:26 <Pyrrh> Which I did not know

04:27 <ec> I told you that it was!

04:27 <Pyrrh> FINEFINE technological excuses prevail

04:27 <ec> perfect timing tho

04:27 <Pyrrh> haha yes you did I'm just giving you shit <3

04:27 <ec> <criticize Pyrrh> <phone immediately dies>

04:27 <ec> so I think I'm gonna pick up a ICOM IC-7100 on sale

04:27 <Pyrrh> ^^ that exact thing

04:27 <ec> and a Comet UHV-6 antenna

04:29 <ljharb> everything is made of light

04:29 <ljharb> e equals mc squared, yo

04:30 <ec> ljharb: well, they thought radio was sound waves, so, like, ;)

04:31 <ljharb> i mean, they're all forms of EM radiation :-p

04:31 <ljharb> well, all forms of radiation.

04:31 <ljharb> physics is fun

04:32 <ec> sound-pressure waves aren't radiation o_O

04:32 <ec> ljharb what are you smoking

04:32 <Pyrrh> I can't physics. It's my most insurmountable shortcoming

04:33 <ec> Pyrrh: I can't drawing

04:33 <ec> personally

04:33 <Pyrrh> ooh I see what you did there

04:33 <Pyrrh> :3 we all have something

04:33 <ec> everything else, time, effort, or as a last resort, money, has overcome or will overcome

04:33 <ec> but drawing? fucking nope

04:33 <Pyrrh> lol well at least you get it :P

04:33 <ec> I don't even like it

04:33 <ec> I am not art

04:33 <ec> but like

04:33 <ec> it pisses me off that I'm so bad

04:33 <ec> and about once every three years I get all fed up and do my whole I WILL. CONQUER. THIS. thing

04:33 <ec> and ... fail

04:33 <ec> lol

04:34 <Pyrrh> I started out as hardware engineering instead of software but I was like NOOOOOOPE as soon as I remembered I can spend literally all my time studying physics and still fuck up the basics

04:34 <ljharb> ec: it's not a radiation of physical vibrations?

04:34 <ec> hm, wow, I ... am not sure about the answer to that

04:34 <ljharb> ec: it's not electromagnetic but it's still energy being transmitted in the form of compression waves

04:34 <ec> what even is the technical definition of radiation

04:34 <ec> just that it expands radiatively?

04:34 <ec> or, what

04:34 <ljharb> yeah maybe i'm playing fast and loose with the dictionary

04:34 <ec> like yeah I'm lost tbh

04:35 <ljharb> physics is still fun

04:35 <ec> WELL AT LEAST WE CAN AGREE FOR SURE THAT PYRRH WAS WRONG ;)

04:35 <Pyrrh> lmao

04:35 <ec> ljharb, come get your ham w/ me

04:35 <Pyrrh> that's usually the case ;)

04:35 <ec> u 2 Pyrrh

04:35 <ec> let's try and dx with eachother

04:35 <Pyrrh> sure! no time like the present to learn

04:35 <ec> pronounced “dix w/ each other”

04:35 <ljharb> ham?

04:35 <Pyrrh> how many dollars are they

04:35 <ec> lmao cheap as fuck nowadays

04:35 <ljharb> i like ham but that second thing doesn't sound as delicious

04:35 <Pyrrh> oh bby yes let's dix

04:35 <ec> Baofeng UV-5R+ is like. fifty bucks? less?

04:35 <Pyrrh> oh that's not bad at all

04:35 <ec> I mean you can spend Arbitrarily Much, it's definitely one of those hobbies

04:36 <ec> one of the transceivers I very briefly looked into for my Ideal Car Setup is, like, fucking $8,999

04:36 <ec> no antenna, no wiring, that's literally just the *box*

04:36 <Pyrrh> but like besides dixing with irc peeps what could I use it for?

04:36 <ec> it's an ‘expands to fill the available resources’ hobby in terms of time, too: you can get arbitrarily obsessive about your rig's SWR and radiated efficiency and shit

04:37 <ec> (look at me, using these terms like I have the slightest idea what they mean! yay!)

04:37 <Pyrrh> woo go you!

04:37 <ec> well so basically the *real* point of amateur radio is that it's extremely, extremely fucking reliable and simple

04:37 <ec> in a zombie apocalypse, you could still talk to people in fucking London; or more usefully, radiate and exchange messages in your larger-local area

04:37 <ec> in *practice*, it's a social thing, afaict

04:38 <ec> a lot like this IRC channel: people get on and shoot the shit about ... whatever ... with other ham ops

04:38 <Pyrrh> or more realistically, assuming both me and the equipment survived it, the imminent earthquake/volcano implosion of the PNW

04:38 <Pyrrh> that english was terrible

04:38 <ec> it's also just all fun from a technical aspect: again, it's actually pretty *technically* simple; almost all of the gear that you can spend lots of money on, you can also *build*, yourself, from scratch, and watch it work

04:38 <Pyrrh> assumbing both the equipment and I survived it

04:39 <ec> yeah: during 9/11 in NYC, literally every communications infrastructure went to shit,

04:39 <Pyrrh> okay building one would be super cool

04:39 <ec> so the fire/police/emergency responders collected friends who were HAMs, and the HAMs kept all the emergency responders in touch across the city

04:39 <ec> because it's the lowest-common-denominator, basically

04:39 <Pyrrh> that's pretty neato

04:39 <ec> same thing happened in Hurricane Katrina

04:40 <ec> and there's N+1 stories about HAMs hearing, and rescuing, <random dude on shitty Wal-Mart CB radio, stuck with a broken leg somewhere in Yosemite> from halfway across the continent

04:41 <ec> so yeah: barrier-to-entry is basically zilch (buy $50 handheld radio or even build one, learn the terms and physics and Morse code); and it's a hobby with a weird cross-section of people (ancient crusty engineers; semi-truck drivers; TEOTWAWKI survivalists; software / Web peeps; hunters / backwoods-livers)

04:42 <Pyrrh> that sounds like my kind of people and I've always meant to learn morse code for some reason

04:44 <ec> so yeah buy this and be yay: https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B00HX03AMA/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=elliottcable-20&camp=1789&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=B00HX03AMA&linkId=962d483280362b2c39ae6d171a9d5663

04:45 <ec> (don't buy anything more expensive from Baofeng, though — they're only fun b/cuz they're surprisingly full-featured for being freakin' $25 lol; but there's much better options anywhere above $100)

04:45 <ec> oh and maybe invest a few bucks in a better antenna; a whip (long thin metal fling thing) will do you much better than the duckbill (stubby rubber thick motherfucker) that comes with it.

04:48 <ec> also ##hamradio

05:08 <ec> “Further, by definition, people interested in 2-way radios are VERY talkative,”

05:08 <ec> I fucking lol'd,

05:11 <ec> Oh, wow. The amount that I love this physically *hurts*. https://player.vimeo.com/video/126726117?portrait=0

05:11 <ec> Chicago is bae.

05:36 <ec> Pyrrh: I CHANGED MY MIND THIS IS SO HARD AHHHH

05:36 <ec> http://lcwo.net/courselesson

05:39 <Pyrrh> ec: got distracted making yarn. what's difficult?

05:41 <ec> Pyrrh: come beat me at cw-encoding

05:42 <Pyrrh> mmmmmm maybe over winter break lol

05:42 <ec> no right now i demand it

05:44 <ec> no i lied i'm going bed

20:24 <ec> guess what this is

20:25 <ec> http://ell.io/i1bI0L+?.png

20:34 <pikajude> not loading

20:35 <ec> y

20:35 <pikajude> because godaddy

20:41 <ec> damnit pikajude

20:42 <pikajude> it wasn't my fault

20:42 <pikajude> Ok it's some kind of

20:42 <pikajude> printed medium

20:42 <ec> hahah

20:42 <ec> it's an entire operating system.

20:42 <ec> printed out.

20:44 <pikajude> oh

20:44 <pikajude> Which one

21:12 <ec> xv6

21:30 <pikajude> Oh

23:17 <ec> there's a Lethal Weapon TV show!?