The Ultraviolet Garden

Not happy with my gallery. The problem is, one can’t comment on a single photo or even a single gallery. If you leave a comment on any photo or gallery—it’ll show up on ALL photos and galleries.

Unacceptable. I will find a way to fix that. Meantime, if you’re not specific in your comments I have no idea what photo or gallery you might be commenting on.

I don’t know if I want to add a five star rating system or not. Probably not. It shouldn’t be that easy for you to dislike my shit. I prefer forcing you to actually comment to tell me I suck. You don’t get off with just one click. You’ll have to contend with me I guess.

Haven’t been logging on to Facebook as much. It just really, really sucks over there. All the quizzes, for one (and I like quizzes). I wouldn’t mind them so much if everyone would occasionally post something other than that.

Also, it shouldn’t be notifying me via email that someone “also” commented on something, when I have not commented on it! But no, they want you to be notified, even if you just hit “like” and did not comment at all. So at least in this respect, Facebook doesn’t distinguish between “comment” and “like”.

Well. I didn’t like.

Elsewise, I found a neat resource: RR_LiveAudio.

That’s “Radio Reference” if you’re not a scanner head. Follow their tweets and the next time news is being made, you might be able to listen to the live radio chatter as it happens. This was the case re the Balloonboy. It was very interesting listening to what was going on as it happened.

I wouldn’t mind providing a feed to RR, but someone’s already providing coverage for my county. It’s pretty awesome.

This is a very old scanner model. They’re not made anymore but a few folks out there still have their old Sportcats. I had this model in the ’90s:

The frustrating thing was that I had to call Uniden up and ask for the IF because it wasn’t printed in the manual! Can you believe that shit? The woman on the phone had no clue what I was talking about. I asked her to excuse herself and put someone on who knows what an intermediate frequency is, and to then give that information TO ME.

Finally a guy came on who knew what an IF was but he had a hard time finding the IF on this model. He finally found it and gave it to me, but I lost it. It was yrs ago, after all.

But recently I needed it again.

I wasn’t able to find this information on the ‘net. Anywhere. Therefore, I figured it out for myself and offer the info here for others. You ready? Here goes.

And the Intermediate Frequency for the scanner models SC150B (black) and SC150Y (yellow) is…

(drumroll…)

21.6MHz

That’s twenty-one point six megahertz.

Good luck navigating the reverberations every 21.6 megahertz! I understand, now, why double and triple conversion is a good thing. Glad we got a new model, now we use both.

I still think the signals they’ve recently made illegal for us to hear (signals that were perfectly legal in the 90s) should belong to whomever has the receiver to pick it up.

Provided, of course, that they keep printing and including warnings on any products (like baby monitors and wireless phones) that DO broadcast, no matter how weakly the signal. This way the user becomes responsible for not revealing personal information (like credit card numbers) on their cordless phones.

And everyone should know that their baby monitor broadcasts a signal. Do you want strangers in your ‘hood listening to your baby’s bedroom? Creepy! So just be aware. Nobody can do that job but you. RYFMP (Read Your Fucking Manuals, People).

Wouldn’t you rather be responsible and more “aware” of the world around you? Rather than having a Nanny State, as Ron Paul put it recently?

What was it Twain said about censorship? Oh yeah:

Censorship is telling a man he can’t have a steak just because a baby can’t chew it. —Mark Twain

We finally got a new scanner. I broke my old one years ago. We’re having fun already.