This is the web home of Jason E. Miller, Ph.D. The pages and links share information for Miller and those people with similar interests.
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Share your study progress in the HamStudy app
I was today days old when I learned that you don’t have to study for an amateur radio license by yourself. HamStudy has the capability to invite other people on your preparation journey by sharing with them your study progress.
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Regular Expressions and Preparing for the Amateur Extra Class Amateur Radio License Exam
One of the best ways to prepare to take and pass an FCC amateur radio licensing exam is to get the question pool and familiarize yourselve with the questions and their answers, ignoring the distractifiers. Of couse, if you want to understand the reasons why the correct answer is correct, that’s a bonus. In my experience, though, you’ll learn the ‘why’ more effectively through operating and doing amateur radio. It’s not necessary for passing licensing exams.
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Automating the creation of a two-page weekly calendar
The Getting Things Done (TM) ecosystem has a rich marketplace of doodads and dawdles that help support their productivity regime. Last year, I paid them $19 for a PDF that consisted of 52+ two-sided sheets, each a week-at-a-glance in the style of GTD. Each page has the page’s date range displayed at the top left, two mini-month calendars in the top right, one for last month and one for the following month, and then space for you to record what’s going to happen on each of the days, again in GTD style.
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COMING SOON - the Innovation Bridge
In December, President Yao approved the creation of the Innovation Bridge, a new applied research institute at the University. The Innovation Bridge is a faculty-led effort designed to foster sustainable and robust collaboration between the University and Navy commands at Naval Base Ventura County (NBVC). Acting as a portal, The Innovation Bridge will facilitate and catalyze partnerships, providing a structured pathway for engagement.
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Today's RDP Presentation
This morning, I’ll be standing in front of 20-30 people associated with local government and Navy at a meeting of the Regional Defense Partnership (formerly known as the Research Defense Partnership for the 21st century, or RDP-21) to talk about part of my sabbatical project with Fathomwerx.
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Hidden Gems - Fathomwerx Part 1 - What is it?
Up until this point, I have drawn my ‘hiiden gems’ from the military assets in the region. I started with the Coast Guard, moved to Naval Base Ventura County, and then I wrote about the three tenant commands that are also federal Science and Technology Reinvention Laboratory. (Recall that they are the Naval Surface Warfare Center - Port Hueneme Division. In this post, I begins to edge out from behind the Department of Defense fence line that protects the previous examples to write about Fathomwerx.
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Hidden Gems - The Federal Laboratories at Naval Base Ventura County
By my count, I’ve shared six posts about ‘hidden gems’ in the Ventura County region. They all involve the Navy installation in the County. I promise that I’ll edge out of the military sector soon, but frankly this is my wheelhouse right now. Today, I’m going to circle back around on NAVFAC, NSWD-PHD, and NAWC-WD at a slightly higher level to amplify a motivation for writing this ‘hidden gem’ series.
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Hidden Gems - Naval Facilities Engineering and Expeditionary Warfare Center and the SeaBees
This episode of ‘hidden gems’ shines the spotlight on the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Port Hueneme Division (NWSC-PHD), part of the U.S. Navy’s Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA). Located at Naval Base Ventura County, NWSC-PHD is charged with providing the surface fleet with state-of-the art in-service engineering support. Just as NAWC-WD is the primary command for naval air weapons testing and evaluation (see my previous ‘gems’ note), NWSC-PHD is the primary testing and evaluation command for (sea) surface systems and system integration.
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GitHub Authentication Solution
I write using Markdown and LaTeX. These flat file formats allow me to use version control, which I first learned from my Computer Science colleagues at Truman State. Thanks, dudes! Some time ago, I adopted the Tower application as my
gitenvironment of choice. While I can manage git at the command line, I liked the way Tower displays information, and I like its UI with its buttons and menus. -
Hidden Gems - Naval Surface Warfare Center - Port Hueneme Division
This episode of ‘hidden gems’ shines the spotlight on the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Port Hueneme Division (NWSC-PHD), part of the U.S. Navy’s Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA). Located at Naval Base Ventura County, NWSC-PHD is charged with providing the surface fleet with state-of-the art in-service engineering support. Just as NAWC-WD is the primary command for naval air weapons testing and evaluation (see my previous ‘gems’ note), NWSC-PHD is the primary testing and evaluation command for (sea) surface systems and system integration.
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Hidden Gems - Naval Air Warfare Center - Weapons Division
A recent post in my ‘hidden gems’ series highlighted Naval Base Ventura County, the Navy organization (and property) that takes care of over 75 tenant organizations that include the Coast Guard Air Station Ventura. My next three ‘gems’ posts pick three tenants that are both Navy commands and federal laboratories. The first of these is the Naval Air Warfare Center - Weapons Division (NAWC-WD).
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Hidden Gems - Naval Base Ventura County
If you live in Ventura County, you know about ‘the Navy base’. It’s down there on the far side of the Oxnard plain, sitting on the coast like you’d think a naval base should. (Wait until I write about NAWC-WD and China Lake!) The base we see from outside the fenceline is called Naval Base Ventura County, and it consists of two, non-contiguous parts: Point Mugu Air Base and Port Hueneme. OK, there’s a couple other parts: the antenna array on Laguna Peak and San Nicholas Island. But let’s focus on Mugu and Hueneme.
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Hidden Gems - Coast Guard Air Station Ventura County
Today, the ‘hidden gem’ I’m writing about is the Coast Guard Air Station at Naval Base Ventura County. Like the other ‘gems’ I’m writing about, this Coast Guard Air Station is a community asset that has value to us. It is evidence of economic, geographic, and cultural strengths of the region.
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Hidden Gems Introduction Post
Over the next couple of weeks or months, I’m going to share some short write-ups about ‘hidden gems’ in my part of Southern California that I’m discovering through my sabbatical time at Fathomwerx. (If you don’t know about Fathomwerx, it’s a ‘hidden gem’ I’ll write about shortly.) I’ll try to get my details right, but nothing I’m writing is official or meant to speak for the people or organizations I’m describing. If you want to learn more about any one of the topics I’ll write about, I’ll provide web links to get you started in your learning journey.
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How To Fit An Ellipse to Data
Last month, Karen Kikuchi, a mathematics teacher at Rancho Campana High School in Camarillo, CA, reached out to the Mathematics Department at CI to ask if there were a mathematician who could advise a group of students on a mathematics problem they were wrestling with. The students were working on submitting an entry to NASA’s App Development Challenge.
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Putting a Winch on a 100-series LandCruiser Isn't Easy
Change of plans. You know how, when you hear something you agree with and want to believe, it makes it easier for you to overlook flaws in what you’re hearing? That happened to me last week. I wanted to add a front winch to my rig, and this post at ih8mud.com told me what I wanted to hear: it would be easy peasy to mount a winch. It would only take a couple cuts of some steel and a little welding.
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How To Get Your Amateur Radio License
This is a short write-up on how to get your first amateur radio license.
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Calculating CW frequencies from Audio
EDIT: cleaned up the script a tiny bit.
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Tools for a new Ham Radio Club
Our campus radio club has an ARDC grant that will allow us to get some tools. A fundamental goal of our club is to be able to support students where their interests in radio might take them. This means the club needs to be flexible. Also, we don’t have a lot of room, so large testing instruments like signal generators and oscilloscopes aren’t really an option. (We can go use those instruments in the physics labs.) I’m a handy guy who could make up a decent shopping list for tools on my own, but I wanted my ideas to be validated. And I wanted help to see around corners.
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Some project for CI students interested in amateur radio
Our campus amateur radio club, which was established to support the amateur radio interests of University employees, students, and our alumni, aims to attract people to the ‘hobby’ by providing access to appealing work. Because everyone’s interests vary, this means we need to have a wide variety of projects on hand that are ready for students engagement.
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Getting Started in Amateur Radio
My summer radio course is having success with students getting their Tech license, so I get an up-close look at the confusion in their faces when they start thinking about what’s next. Building on ideas in the article “New Ham Kit: A Way for Clubs to Help Get New Hams on the Air” (ARRL, Feb 2021), I watned to create a Equipment for a new Tech guide. Here’s what I came up with.
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New Hams - Summer Radio Class and its Students
For some reason, the Interim Dean of the School of Arts & Sciences decided to promote the teachign of S-factor courses this summer. The ‘S’ stands for supervision, and these are courses that generally have a low student-to-faculty ratio and require personalized supervision and mentoring by the instructor of record. In STEM, an undergraduate research experience could be taught as an S-factor course. Since I was planning on being around anyway, having agreed to teach Calculus 1, and since my Chair thought it was a good idea, I proposed to the Interim Dean that I teach a course in amateur radio. I think I called is ‘Amateur Radio and Society’ or somethings. My proposal was approved, and here I am four weeks into the summer session with something to say about the course.
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Fun activity today - CVARC on the air from Anacapa Island
Today, the Conejo Valley Amateur Radio Club is organizing a trip to Anacapa Island in the Channel Islands National Park to ‘activate’ Anacapa as part of ‘Parks on the Air’ (POTA) and ‘Islands on the Air’ (IOTA) amateur radio activities. If you have a license and want to get on the air, this gives you a fun opportunity to do so. And monitoring their activity will be interesting, too.
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My Commencement Remarks, May 2023
One duty of the Chair of the Academic Senate is to deliver brief remarks to the graduates at commencement. Below is a copy of the remarks that I delivered to the Office of the President for inclusion in the ceremony.
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CalState Channel Islands Amateur Radio Interest Group Newsletter, May 2023
CSUCI AMATEUR RADIO INTEREST GROUP State of the Club Message May 2023
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How Could the Club do SOTA?
This post explores SOTA as an activity that could increase student engagement in a radio club.
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How to Build Relationships with Other College Clubs
We know that Cal Poly SLO has an active radio club. CSUN used to have an active club. There are probably other campuses nearby that have some degree of radio activity (e.g., is anything happening at our community college partners?).
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Grant Ideas for our Amateur Radio Group
Tonight I participated in the ARRL Zoom-inar where three leaders described a new grant program where ARRL will be giving away grants in amounts between $5000 and $25000 to amateur radio clubs.
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Activities our Amateur Radio Group Might Consider
This document is meant to pull together a few ideas the club might consider as focal activities or one-off topics of conversations at a meeting.
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Helping students use LaTeX for class
I’m teaching mathematical modeling in the spring. This is an upper-level (senior) course, and I think I’m going to take the opportunity to have students use LaTeX to typeset some of their work.
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Notes for SENATE OFFICERS AND INTERIM PRESIDENT YAO, Monday, January 3rd
On Monday, January 3rd, the Officers of the Academic Senate had a regular meeting with Interim President Yao. Raquel and Jason were present. So was Provost Avila. Conversation focused on repopulating campus for the Spring 2022 and the options the president was considering.
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Notes for SENATE OFFICERS AND INTERIM PRESIDENT YAO, Tuesday, December 14th
On Tuesday, December 14th, the Officers of the Academic Senate had a regular meeting with Interim President Yao. Topics of conversations included a report on the dire enrollment numbers for Spring, a mention of a HERD-funded effort to support students, an effort to get seniors the classes they need to graduate, low-income housing effort, a joint-plan with community college leaders to help everyone’s enrollment, and some conversation about the campus budget process. This note will summarize some of this.
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Committee Notes for UNIVERSITY POLICE ADVISORY COMMITTEE, Monday, December 13, 2021
The meeting focused on the University Police Department’s implementation reporting requirements of the Racial and Identify Profiling Act (CA Senate Bill 953 from 2015). Information was presented by Interim Chief Drake Massey and Officer Hector Gomez.
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Committee Notes for CROSS-DIVISIONAL COMMUNICATIONS GROUP, Friday, December 17, 2021
The agenda was light. The report on campus COVID number showed that numbers were very low; the campus’s first ‘outbreak’ was behind us. Looking back on the term, there was a feeling of contentment and ease with how things were going. But then conversation turned in two different directions.
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Radio Room on Campus
Amateur radio is one step closer to having a place on campus. Yesterday, Bill Boyd from the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department Office of Emergency Services came to campus with Stu Sheldon, a representative of the volunteer Auxilliary Communication Service (ACS), to check out Bell Tower 2301. This small closet between Bell Tower and Bell Tower West has been identified as a potential home for a radio room on campus.
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Sign-up for Intro to Math Modeling in Spring 2021
In Spring 2021, the Mathematics Department will be offering a topics course (MATH 490) on
Introduction to Mathematical Modeling. This describes this course and what students can expect from it. -
Regular Expressions and Preparing for the General Class Amateur Radio License Exam
Last week I decided to study for and take the FCC Amateur Radio License exam for a General class license. I earned the Technician class license a couple years ago, and I’ve been spending some time this summer learning more about my radios. I learned that my fiddling with antennas and things has significant overlap with topics on the General exam. So I shrugged and decided to prepare for it.
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Standards-Based Grading Conference
Registration is now open for the STEM higher education Master Grading Conference on 11-12 June 2021.
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Great advice for everyong heading into the New year
@Japked deze al gezien? A no-bullshit piece of advice by @profgalloway pic.twitter.com/i4dKida5AH
— Mathijs (@Timmermanscm) December 27, 2020 -
Academic Integrity
On Christmas Eve, a letter from a member of the Mathematical Association of America (MAA) appeared in MAA Connect, a community discussion board. The member, who is named Richard, was sharing his frustration with incidents of dishonesty he’d uncovered in one of his mathematics classes. He shared a letter he wrote and sent to the students, and he invited others to share how they have dealt with academic dishonetsy in their classes. This is what I wrote and posted in MAA Connect in response.
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Conic Sections on Twitter
Saw this cool tweet and wanted to see how it would render on this web site.
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Adding post tagging to jekyll's Minima theme
It’s almost Christmas Eve and I’m fiddling with a web page. I moved my content from a Wordpress site to a jekyll installation that can be hosted freely by GitHub. The ‘minima’ theme seems to scratch most of my itches, but there are a couple I want to address in the next couple days. Today’s is tagging.
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Liquid Template Language in Markdown on Jekyll
As I’m trying to document my experience customizing my jekyll install to allow posts to have tags, I realize that the blocks of Liquid template langauge don’t render in my
syntaxblocks. -
Adjusting My Teaching During Our Public Health Emergency
On Wednesday evening, the University responded to public health concerns about the novel coronavirus (SAR-CoV–2) by transitioning all face-to-face lecture classes to virtual instruction. This change affects all my courses. I’m writing about my plans here so my students know what to expect.
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Needs proof
Every triangle has a line through it that simultaneously divides its area and its perimeter each in half. (Why?) For an isosceles triangle that special line is its line of symmetry. Where is that special line for a 3-4-5 right triangle?
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Student Agency and Performance Climate
This is one of my favorite education paragraphs and it talks about this dichotomy (from Solomon&Black 2008, recommended to me by @MandyMathEd ) pic.twitter.com/JRfcg9mRQH
— Michael Reitemeyer (@mreitemeyer) January 12, 2019 -
Memorizing Mathematics
"When we memorize rules for moving symbols around on paper we may be learning something, but we are not learning mathematics." Making Sense, p. 2 pic.twitter.com/iAWo6HDYgB
— Michael Reitemeyer (@mreitemeyer) November 7, 2018 -
Research Opportunity with the U.S. Navy
If you’re a member of the CI faculty, and you’re interested in work being done at one (or more) of the commands at Naval Base Ventura County, then you should consider applying to participate in the ONR’s Summer Faculty Research Program. The application is not onerous, and you don’t even have to line up a collaborator, first. (Though I imagine that would help.)
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Problem with the Anabat Swift
The purpose of this post is to describe an error we’re experiencing with two of our Anabat Swifts. The third Swift in our stable works perfectly well, we think. In this post, I’ll summarize our problem. Then I will give a detailed report on our last encounter with the problem. If we solve the problem, I will edit this post to include an explanation of the source of the problem (as I understand it) and the solution to the problem.
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Trouble with Anabat Insight
I’m experiencing some ‘bad behavior’ from Analook Insight, a program I’m using to clean call files recorded with an Anabat Swift.
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Making and Edukating: an idea waiting to happen (revised)
Across the country, a handful of companies, nonprofit groups, public educational agencies and even science museums are trying to make manufacturing seem, well, fun. Focusing mainly on children aged 10 to 17, organizations including the Da Vinci Science Center in Allentown, Pa.; and Stihl, a maker of chain saws and other outdoor power equipment in Virginia Beach, Va., run camps that let students operate basic machinery, meet workers and make things.
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Up and Up: Putting the Balloons to Bed
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Tremendous. Experience.
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Up and Up: If Lost, Please Return To....
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Up and Up: Still Winds Over Campus
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Up and Up: Breaking Against the Wind
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Up and Up: Failure Lies on the Path of True Knowledge
There’s a failure meme out there, and here is our contribution. I post this for fun and to contribute to the meme.
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Up and Up: Further adventures in educational ballooning
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Making and Edukating: a fun test leading to a big week
In a little over a week, I play host to 33 junior high students from Kansas City who are going to come to Truman’s campus and spend three days learning what college is like. For the last few weeks, I’ve been madly putting a program together that leans somehow on model rocketry. What can be more fun that controlled explosions, right?
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A Pogue PR Misstep?
Just caught this on the NYTImes.com: popular gadget reviewer and a freelancer for The Times, David Pogue, is caught up in an ethics foofaraw concerning his relationship to public relations (PR) people.