Tag: South Korea
Origins of April Fools (All Fools Day) Day
April Fools day has thrown me off since I was a kid. I thought it was quite irrational if not ‘wrong’ that there would be a day when you could trick (a.k.a. lying) your parents and do pranks and not get in trouble. I noticed people also enjoyed tricking me. For me it was the only day of the year I could put saran wrap over the toilet bowl or point the water hose out of the back of the toilet tank and not get in serious trouble. All I had to do was make the ‘April Fools’ mercy cry. I knew something was wrong with this day.
The real moment of curiousity and intrigue came while I was living in Korea. I was completely thrown off that Koreans also ‘celebrate’ this wacko tradition of tom foolery. I thought it was another inexplicable western mystery (like Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny)(which incidentally I have blogged on and de-mystified slightly) but apparently the Asians like to have a day of acceptable folly as well.
Here I am thirty some-odd years later and I still don’t have any of the answers so this year I started doing a little casual research that I thought I would blog for myself and anyone else who would like to solve the mystery of its roots. Especially absent seems to be the participation of Korea in this wackiness. For example, did the west, by chance, steal the tradition from the east and claim it as their own (like chess perhaps) or vice versa? This truly was intriguing.
I did the usual large search engine search and came up with the usual suspects:
- Wikipedia page which lead to my favourite explanation of the day – Sizdah Be-dar from Iran
- An info page by some info article site
- Huffington Post article which contains lots of faith-rooted suggestions for the history. This was probably the most enjoyable and generally interesting article of the three so far if you have to choose for the sake of time 😉
- More? Now it’s your turn to add to the learning
Since this is still a wild card, I would love if someone could, in the comments below, throw in some useful links so that by this time next year I can publish a very awesome ‘guide to April Fools day’ kind of thing. I’m especially looking for when and how April Fools day started in Korea. I’m guessing at this point maybe the foreign soldiers brought it in and played pranks on their unsuspecting Korean comrades to improve morale and help them laugh amongst nasty blood shed?
Echolink for Amateur Radio: Why is it still the best kept secret?
I’ll admit that I’ve been a weekend warrior ham man for too many years. I’m definitely not the guy to have the right to complain about anything based on my participation in the community.
That said, my name is VE7CAK and I’m back. And I’m here to stay – God willing and the creek don’t rise. Special thanks to VA7OBI for re-igniting my airwaves and for the folks who set up the Burnaby 147.060 repeater with the kick (_!_) coverage.
Echolink has always been mysteriously well hidden – even in the midst of ham-sters. I’m not sure why but here are my guesses:
- Real radio men believe internet-connected radios are for sissies. I partially agree. If you can’t do it with your own radio and antennas then you are relying on some ISP (Internet Service Provider)
- Club members who pay for the hardware and service don’t want outsiders to figure out how to use their gear (highly unlikely)
- The Echolink material was written for the people who set up and maintain the node, not for the end user. They just have to figure it out (quite likely).
- The likelihood of someone using a radio to connect to the Echolink node using DTMF tones versus those who will connect with an app on their smart phone are far less so all energy and instructions are focused on the appy people.
- The original software was designed for the ever-proprietary Windows OS only so you are dealing with people who don’t know how to think for themselves, let alone help others think. If it was designed for Ubuntu there would probably be a feature length instructional video by now and it would be integrated in the operating system (That was just a mini-rant).
Regardless, we need to pull together as real radio men (and women, and children) and make this Echolink thing more approachable so we can start connecting more.
The following are the areas that I realized are missing or lacking in Echolink. I will post the results of my research right after I summarize the points and hopefully this can remain a ‘live document’ so I can update it as I learn more:
- A super clear tutorial about how to connect from your radio (ie. mobile in your car) to the Echolink node, and then off to wherever you want to chat in the world.
- There is no Echolink software in the Ubuntu Software Center. I wish I could program!
- There is no place, it seems, where you can go for a language translation of amateur radio terminology. I thought I would try to connect to a South Korean Echolink node and realized I didn’t know how to say “VE7CAK monitoring” in Korean. I could speak a basic conversation but I didn’t have this kind of terminology. This probably wasn’t relevant at all ten years ago but Echolink has literally revolutionized the posibilities. Here is a quote from their site:
There are more than 200,000 validated users worldwide — in 151 of the world’s 193 nations — with about 5,200 online at any given time.
- Within the Android Echolink app, the nodes don’t display their node numbers! This is kind of amazing to me. I *must* be wrong….
Here is the evolving and improving document as I [hope to] find solutions to these challenges:
- A super clear tutorial about how to connect from your radio (ie. mobile in your car) to the Echolink node, and then off to wherever you want to chat in the world
I thankfully found a snippet of a post from this forum which seems to answer my question. I haven’t had a chance to make it work yet but I hope to do so soon:
KE7VLC10-06-2010, 06:39 PM
hey all, this might be a dumb question, but do you need a computer to use echolink on the radio? if not, how do you use it?thanks guysTo use Echolink you need one of two things. Either a radio that you are able to connect to a repeater that has Echolink capabilities…..or a computer.You can use an HT or a mobile radio that has a DTMF pad to connect to a repeater….if it has the capabilities of connecting to the internet and has an Echolink node. All you need to have is the node number of the other repeater or station you want to connect to. For example driving down the highway the one repeater you can reach has the capability, all you would have to do is key up and keep holding it down while you are punching in the DTMF (the repeater owner should advertise this but if you can’t find it then you will have to ask around) that keys up the Echolink program connected to it then punch in the node number and let off the key. The repeater should announce that it has connected. Then you transmit just like any normal QSO on a repeater. Once done with the ragchew just follow the directions to drop the node. Make sure you ask if anyone is using the repeater first and wait a min or so for a response….if not then announce that you are trying to activate Echolink and proceed. Once you are finished let everyone know that you are done using the repeater. It’s really close to the same proceedure for a phone patch.If you don’t have a mobile radio or an HT OR a repeater in the area that has a Echolink sysop then you will have to use a computer. Echolink requires an internet connection so it’s obvious why someone wouldn’t want to set one up….especially if there is no internet connection near the repeater.Hope this helps.
There are more than 200,000 validated users worldwide — in 151 of the world’s 193 nations — with about 5,200 online at any given time.
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