October 13, 2020

I began work on an AngularJS app to record callsigns for Ham Radio:

I plan on making it AngularJS based, and want an easy way to quickly record callsigns and look them up on a related callsign lookup site.

I’m still debating the usefulness of it, as it would be cool to export the same data. However at the same time, instead of exporting it to Excel or .txt formats, you could have easily made a similar list in your text editor of choice, so why bother exporting it?

However, that’s where we can abuse the fact that its a web app in a browser since we can then create anchor links to easily get information about a person given their callsign for future contacts (email address, etc.).

Here’s the link for AngularJS for reference:

I wasn’t able to easily get a ham radio callsign lookup using the popular ham radio site, QRZ.com, or even the FCC database. This is most likely because both sites most likely use AJAX calls to refresh the page without refreshing the overall page. This means that the URL itself is never updated with your actual search query so you can’t just build anchor links unfortunately. To see this in action, use your favorite search engine, and notice the “q=” variable for your search query change within the top URL as you progress throughout the site.

Also, I know for a fact that QRZ.com uses an API, which means that even if I were to apply for an API key even for a basic app, there’s still the chance that someone might abuse my given API key with 60+ API calls per second. Plus, I hate API’s so… that’s that.

It’s always easier to just scrape data instead ^_^

However, I did find this jenky third party website that allows you to easily lookup ham’s by their callsign without an API , so I’m just going to use that instead:

It’s gonna be fun :)

After that, I’m planning to make a React JS web app for a stock ticker to rip the top stocks from the the Yahoo! Finance stock tickers directly, or through a Python 3 webscraper data pull.

I’m going to most likely have to re-arrange the “Programming” page to accommodate this, but I can easily have a “web app” section near the top, and any of the archive or Git repo related projects at the bottom, so it shouldn’t be too hard.

I also have been browsing for some art to follow, and really trying to see what’s out there to push myself in what I am to be able to do.

Since its pretty obvious I’m into a lot of technical topics, there’s a lot of art that translates from the “Demo Scene” that relates to my interests, and the art I want to do. The “Demo Scene” is a bit hard to explain, but it basically features computer based art for the most part. It also involves gatherings similar to LAN parties, but with mostly demos including computers, music, and art.

Here’s some “Demo Scene” art website I found to be pretty cool:

More so, if I could do Grafx2 style art in the vein of this guy, I would be pretty happy with myself:

Unfortunately, that “ProwlerGFX” guy is primarily on Facebook, which I don’t use at all, and his website is pretty non-functional at this point.

But, I will find similar artists in this style, and see how they were able to get to this level as I really really really like scene based art a lot.

I believe I will get there to the art based apex I want. It’s just that I have to keep practicing art on the weekends whenever I want to chill out. It’s hard sometimes because I burn out from the week easily, but I’ll figure it out somehow.

I’ve made a few icons in Grafx2 for fun the other day, so that’s a start haha.

Also, I would like to start recording for a new band this weekend so that will be fun too.

Happy to keep on going!

~ Sam