Suffice to say, I killed QRP/SWL Homebuilder for good reasons — I’ll only write about what happened after that.
After we switched if off, >100 emails appeared within 30 hours. Builders wrote stuff like ‘thanks’, ‘what the hell?’ and ‘oh no!’ Some even offered to send funds, or to host the web pages. Gosh, I suddenly heard from people from 5 continents who followed the site for years but never emailed.
Certain emails hit me hard with statements like “this is wholly unsatisfactory” or “you can’t stop now, I just discovered the site 3 days ago”. I felt sick and in an act of contrition, swiftly set a goal: after multiple emails and many hours on Skype, Stuart [the computer science engineer who kept the QRP server going] and I archived most of my site into a single pdf file — you’ll find it linked on the Old Site page but hosted by nobles.
More than ever before, I felt the power of a splendent community rising up in joy and generosity. Thank you for this experience.
The Blog Site
I’m quick to dismiss the ersatz blogger: but nod to those who share solid, fresh content — and — don’t just post fluff to keep their blog site appearing continuously in others blog lists. Amid the transfer trauma, I put up Popcorn QRP as yet another experiment — who knows, I might suck at this?
My goals:
- foster creative partnerships
- gather wisdom
- feel inspired by others work
- celebrate the joy of bench experiments
- boost my test and measurement skills
Writing on Blogger offers many perks. For example:
- no ISP bandwidth grief
- 0 server hardware/software headaches
- automatic feeds so people don’t have to check for new content and waste their time
- more appealing to “the youngsters” who love social media and new gadgets
- offers an arena to test ideas and elicit comments about my experiments
- easy translation
Thus, a blog-site feels like a positive step forward for me. Further, I hope to offer some of my better stuff as complete experiments/projects in more coherent pdf files and ask others to host them.
I also feel excited to help Mikey, WB8ICN write some of the technical content for The Five Watter — a printed quarterly published by the Michigan QRP Club.
When published/posted, I'll announce this stuff on my blog and add it to the My Articles page.
On here, I offer only 1 very amateur perspective and you’re always the best person to help you advance on your bench. You won’t see posts that often and I prefer to stay in the background — experiments, photos and schematics (good or bad) shall crash the foreground.
I experiment from October to May only and sadly, all this fuss kept me off the bench. And so, I lack lots of new content to post [ but that's easily fixed ]. Enough writing — it's time to dust off my bench tools and learn something.
Big thanks to all the bloggers/friends and sages who helped me get to this point — you all rock!
Todd, Prof Ivanenko and Prof Petrovna! Good evening!
ReplyDeleteI was feeling really sad when I knew our community was about to loose such prolific trio! All the many hours I spent with you were like real Physics and Radio Classes... and very fun too!
But you find a way to come back :) Thank you so, so muchI heartily wish this new media - blog - supports all your goals. But, specially, I wish it to bring joy and self realization for you.
Keep up the good job!
Thanks
ReplyDelete