Hello. I'm David

I like some things and dislike other things. You may not agree with me on some things. That's okay. I may not agree with you on some things. That's okay, too.

Why does this website exist? Well, I needed the domain for reasons other that running a website, but since I would include "web developer" in the list of several things that I'm competent at it seems I should put something here. Also it's my HTML and CSS playground.

I think I'll post some short musings, appreciations, rants, and interesting tidbits as they pop into my head. I need some content as toys in my HTML and CSS playground anyway.

Find me on Mastodon.

What's a rushtone?

My Dad (RIP) made stuff. Lots of stuff. Different kinds of stuff. Professionally and otherwise.

He was an electrical engineer and had a long career at a major US company designing and building stuff. Lots of RF microwave stuff. I still remember hearing the doppler shift presented as rising and falling audio tones as the transmitted RF signal was mixed with the received (reflected) signal from the horn antenna sticking out the back of his car as he drove me to school. As a car approached it would fall in frequency as it got closer and slowed. Fun stuff.

Anyway, he also built some electro-mechanical things that were not for work, and would sometimes playfully put "branding" on them. This being the 60s and 70s, lots of brands that wanted to sound futuristic would have "tone" in their names, like "Accutone", "Beltone", "Silvertone", or, well, I'm having trouble coming up with many examples right now, but adding "tone" to just about anything made it sound cooler. Trust me.

Ask me about the unlimited hydroplane racing start clock he built in our basement (it involved a 1 RPM motor, several solenoids, a Polaroid camera, and a black powder cannon). Or the burgoo pot. Or the garage door opener powerful enough to lift small children with the door (I never said these things were safe).

So slapping "tone" onto the end of our family name is what he would "brand" some of his creations with.

In honor of him, rushtone.com is my primary domain name.

Time and Place

See Dava Sobel's "Longitude", tying together time and place. It changed the world.

time.gov

Measuring

Time

Place

Distance

Mass

Music

Rock. Blues. Blues/Rock. And then some.

Fairness

Radio (Amateur and Otherwise)

Nothing short of magic.

Communication without infrastructure. Where were the ham operators in The Walking Dead?

Satellites are interesting. Hard, but interesting. Perhaps interesting because they are hard.

Oh, the Places I've Been

Privacy

It's important. And becoming increasingly difficult.

FOSS

I hate it when paywalls get in the way of progress.

Toys

Standards

Everyone should have one. /s

Mastodon

I've joined the 2022 mass migration from Twitter to Mastodon.

I first learned about Mastodon and signed up in 2021 when there were some early rumblings about people's growing dissatisfaction with Twitter, but I must admit I kind of forgot about it. There weren't a lot of people on it (compared to today), and I never really found "my people" there.

But things changed in 2022 November. More people. More toots.

Some of my favorite hashtags:

Java

Python

Rust

GIS

Geographic Information Systems.

The GIS community on Mastodon has grown substantially, and as of 2022 November there is a Mastodon instance intended for GIS people, mapstodon.space.

I like the #GISChat hashtag.

Software

Hardware

HTML and CSS

The Beauty of Simplicity

Science

Countdown to Midnight