A motley collection of ideas
In this section, you’ll find all kinds of articles. Some of them are machine translations of my older writings in Hungarian, which may contain grammatical errors or content that is no longer up to date. I apologize for these mistakes, and I would be very glad if you let me know when you come across any. Happy reading!
The meteorological radiosonde is an interesting creature. It sets off from somewhere beneath a large white balloon, measures the atmosphere’s temperature, humidity, pressure and GPS coordinates, and then, when the balloon bursts, the instrument descends to the ground. For meteorologists, the story more or less ends here; for radio amateurs and radiosonde hunters, however, this … Read more
I have a cat who likes to sleep next to me. In the mornings she wakes me up very sweetly — unless I fail to get up on time. Then she switches to more persuasive methods, and occasionally the pillowcase pays the price. Since proper pillow covers are not exactly cheap, and ours were disappearing … Read more
Mushroom foraging has its small but very important essentials, and one of the most important of these is a good basket. In this article, I present a practical, lightweight solution. Mushroom picking is one of my passions. Without sounding immodest, I can say that I know mushrooms quite well. I learned a great deal from … Read more
Used books do not need sterilizing, but they do need sensible handling. Since the COVID years, no shortage of dubious “disinfection” methods has appeared, from alcohol sprays to ozone generators—many of them more dangerous to paper than to microbes. In practice, the only truly serious risk is not infection, but the chance of bringing home … Read more
The literal English translation of the Hungarian phrase “DVD-játékos” would be “DVD gamer,” which does not mean some bloke raised on the game consoles of the 2000s who insists on physical discs. Rather, people jokingly used it for a “DVD player” because, years ago, the machine-translated Hungarian user manual of a Chinese device — later … Read more
Total Commander’s button bar can launch programs, run scripts, open folders, and automate repetitive file‑management tasks with a single click. You can also pass the currently selected file(s) as parameters, which makes custom buttons ideal for conversion tools, batch renaming helpers, backup scripts, and “open in …” workflows. Where buttons live Custom buttons are stored … Read more
In 1950, the Gilbert U‑238 Atomic Energy Laboratory appeared on toy‑store shelves as an educational kit. This oddity resurfaces from time to time on social media; Facebook just served it up to me again. Back then it cost $49.50 (roughly $650 in today’s money), but nowadays—when it very rarely turns up—it can fetch $4,000–5,000 at … Read more
I wanted a simple, inexpensive antenna for my Little Airshow Radio. The 108–137 MHz range is the VHF airband, where the wavelength is roughly 2.18 m to 2.73 m. That means any resonant antenna designed for this range tends to be physically large. If you’re looking for a small, portable solution, you’ll need to make a few compromises. … Read more
Radiosondes fall back to Earth every day. Most people never notice them. With a small, purpose-built receiver like the MySondy Go, you can not only notice them, but actively track, decode, and recover them. This article documents our build of a MySondy Go device, including a custom-designed 3D‑printed enclosure optimised for real-world field use. Why … Read more
I have a plasma globe that I received about 15 years ago to create illustrations for an article. One day I showed interesting experiments with it, but now I would like to write about why the globe broke down. As is well known, the plasma globe (or Tesla globe) is a decorative glass sphere filled … Read more