Copasetic Flow

One of the fun traditions of ham radio is sending a QSL card to another station to confirm a contact. To do that, you need the address of the receiving station. It's also interesting to find out how far away the QTH, (location), of the station actually was, and operating QRP with the Rockmite, I'm always curious about what the miles per watt number for the contact was as well. The Copasetic Flow QSL mapper below shows all that information! Just enter your callsign, click 'Locate', then enter the callsign of the receiving station and click 'Locate' again. Both stations will be mapped and the distance between them and the watts per mile will be displayed! You can install this gadget on your own iGoogle home page, or on any web page by using the installer from Google .

It occurred to me while developing the ham radio practice exams, ( Technician , General , Extra , Canadian Basic ), that it would be handy to have a scientific calculator available on the same web page as the exam. Google provides a framework that allows applications, (called Google Gadgets), to be deployed on any web page. I looked into available Google Gadgets that fit the bill, but none of them provided the features and the form factor required for the practice exams. So, the Copasetic Flow scientific calculator was created: If you'd like to install the calculator on your own web pages, just pick up the code on the Google Gadgets Catalog .

One of the first things I always find myself doing when writing an application using the Google Visualization API Query Language is writing a simple application framework to test out my data models and queries. Rather than re-inventing the wheel on every project, I decided to just implement a simple tester here where, hopefully, everyone else can benefit from it as well. To use it, simply place the datasource URL you intend to use as well as the query string in the appropriate blanks below. Then click, 'Test Query' to see the results of the query. For example, you can try the datasource URL and a query string from the Hierarchical Chooser post. datasource URL: http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pvFXGB-79Kl2d6jU-_m44ZQ&gid=0&pub=1 Query String: Select A, B, C Datasource URL Query String

Writing about physics and specifically electromagnetism got me to thinking about amateur radio. In the United States, any person can receive an amateur radio license that allows them to transmit and receive on a number of frequencies allocated by the FCC. Amateur radio is a great hobby. People involved in the hobby, (called amateur radio operators), get a chance to turn their EM knowledge into concrete experience by building usable radio transceivers and antenna structures. To get a license, operators must first pass a written test on radio operations fundamentals, engineering, and FCC regulations that apply to amateur radio. The question pools used for the exam are available online as are practice tests. I thought it would be fun to build an application that would construct practice tests on this blog. The final application will provide practice tests similar to the ones at qrz.com but, with a bit more interactivity. This series of articles will cover the construction of t...

Updated March 26, 2008 12:37 PM CMT I'm coming up to speed on the new Google Visualization APIs this week like a lot of other people. As I'm working through my new application that uses this API and Google Docs spreadsheets, I'm running into some issues that aren't covered in the online documentation for the API . I'll post those issues along with their resolution here, so if you run into problems, this is a good place to look. If you run into problems that aren't covered, please add them to the comments section. Of course, the first place to look if you run into issues is on the Google Visualization API Group . Column labels don't work like you might think they should Throughout the Query Language Reference the examples use the labels from the following table: name string dept string lunchTime timeofday salary number hireDate date age number isSenior boolean seniorityStartTime datetime John Eng 12:00:00 1000 2005-03-19 35 true 2007-12-02 15:56:...

No More Interruptions By The Record Label Execs! : Those of you who read " More Cowbell " article about embedding new Google forms in web pages may have noticed the line: " To keep your web page from redirecting to the google success message and requiring your users to press the 'back' button, simply add: target="_blank" to the form tag prior to the action attribute. " at the bottom of the article. It has also been noted in the Google Docs user forums that the forms would be more useful for multi-entry data input if they didn't redirect when the user hit the submit button. Even using the _blank suggestion mentioned above, you'll quickly wind up with an annoyingly large number of 'Thank You' tabs or windows depending on you browser. Well, it turns out, there's an answer to this problem! Immediately before the form tag, insert the following line of html: &lt iframe name="catcher" height="0"&gt&l...

Renaissance Adventures covers a lot of ground. Here's a map with the locations of the posts in the blog, as well as the locations of posts of interest from other sites. Check back often for updates. View Larger Map View Larger Map

First, the what : This article shows how to embed a new Google Form into any web page. To demonstrate ths, a chart and form that allow blog readers to control the recording levels of each instrument in Blue Oyster Cult's "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" is used. HTML code from the Google version of the form included on this page is shown and the parts that need to be modified are highlighted. Next, the why : Google recently released an e-mail form feature that allows users of Google Documents to create an e-mail a form that automatically places each user's input into an associated spreadsheet. As it turns out, with a little bit of work, the forms that are created by Google Docs can be embedded into any web page. Now, The Goods: Click on the instrument you want turned up, click the submit button and then refresh the page. Through the magic of Google Forms as soon as you click on submit and refresh this web page, the data chart will update immediately. Turn up the:...

The bill summary pages are a new project on Renaissance Adventures that utilizes Google Docs and the Google Visualization API. The summary pages provide readers interested in these bills with a links to government data, news stories, and blog entries related to the bills. And, readers can update the links themselves, so that everyone can benefit from the research of the entire readership! To add a link to any section, simply use the form below each section: Clicking 'Submit' will add a new page address and title to the database. Clicking 'View Updates' will update the table above with the link you just submitted. Look for new features to be added soon like sorting by submission date and title. If you have any ideas, I'd love to hear them, please add them to the comments below. Better yet, if anyone would like to help develop this, it would be a fun open source project. Keep checking back for updated information. Also, there will be an article or two in the nea...

This QSL mapper gadget displays the QSL address of any two callsigns and maps the distance between them. Just enter the callsign of the transmitting station and click the 'Locate' button under the 'Transmit Callsign' input field. Then, enter the callsign of the receiving station and click the corresponding 'Locate' button. The QSL addresses will be displayed and mapped. The distance between the two stations will also be displayed. To display the watts per mile figure for the QSO just input your transmitter power in watts before entering the callsigns, or once the callsigns are entered, you can update the power and simply re-click either of the 'Locate' buttons. You can install this gadget on your own iGoogle home page, or on any web page by using the installer from Google .

The Copasetic Flow Scientific Calculator was built using the Google Gadget API and is used on many pages around the site, like the ham radio exams: Technician Class USA General Class USA Extra Class USA Basic Canada If you'd like to add it to your site or igoogle page, go here . Help The Copasetic Flow scientific calculator works exactly like you'd expect a calculator to. You'll notice a few extra buttons if you haven't used a scientific calculator before. Here's what they're for. Raise x to the yth power. First, enter the number for x, for example two. Then, click the x^y button and enter the number for y, for example three. When you press =, you'll get 2 raised to the third power, (2 times 2 times 2): 8. Raise the number e, (Euler's constant, 2.718...), to the power shown on the screen. Enter the number for x, for example two. When you press the e^x button, you'll get the answer for e raised to the second power: 7.389. Raise ten to the power...