Category Archives: Art

A map of languages

This beautifully illustrated infographic (above), designed by South China Morning Post’s graphics director Alberto Lucas Lopéz, shows the most spoken known languages in the world and where they’re spoken by the 6.3 billion people included in the study.

Based on records collated from the database Ethnologue, the infographic illustrates the wide-ranging facts and figures of the world’s living languages catalogued since 1951.

“There are at least 7,102 known languages alive in the world today. Twenty-three of these languages are a mother tongue for more than 50 million people. The 23 languages make up the native tongue of 4.1 billion people,” says Lopez on his infographic.

“We represent each language within black borders and then provide the numbers of native speakers (in millions) by country. The colour of these countries shows how languages have taken root in many different regions,” added Lopez.

You can see the full pie chart in all its technicolor glory here.

Guy shares his nostalgia radio wallpaper for download

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SWLing Post contributor, Guy Atkins, writes:

I’m writing to let you know of a “nostalgia radio” Windows wallpaper graphic I’ve made available to radio hobbyists. This design is called Hertzian Vision, and I created it three years ago for a few SDR enthusiasts/software authors in Finland. I’d like to offer it to your readers too.

My design was inspired by the SPARK Museum of Electrical Invention in Bellingham, Washington, which opened initially as a showcase for antique radios.

Here is a link to a folder with two sizes of the wallpaper:

https://app.box.com/s/33qzg7ouo3sztzzbnd36ylytt1cp7u3y\

The two high resolution wallpaper files are 1920 x 1200 and 2560 x 1440 pixels.

This is a fantastic graphic you’ve created, Guy–many thanks for sharing it with us!

On a side note, Guy also informed me that the SPARK Museum of Electrical Invention also operates a low power FM station, (KMRE) that features old time and classic radio shows. You can listen to KMRE online via TuneIn Radio or several other sources.

All morning, I’ve been listening to KMRE via my SStran AM transmitter though my BC-348-Q. Great fun!

[Update: if you have difficulty downloading the wallpaper via the link above, you can download them directly from the SWLing Post server by clicking here and here.]

Lewis Bush seeks London radio listening posts

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Photographer, Lewis Bush, is seeking ham radio stations and shortwave listening posts in the London, England area. Lewis writes to the SWLing Post:

I’m working on a project which involves trying to locate and map possible broadcast sites for numbers stations (confirmed, suspected, and some highly unlikely) for an eventual book on the subject. These satellite maps (22 in total) are going to be displayed alongside spectrograms of an assortment of shortwave broadcasts and noise, but the final element of the project which I’d really like to include are photographs of ham shacks and shortwave radios themselves.

These photographs would be without people in them and could be as anonymised as the owners like. It’s also not important to me whether the owners are themselves interested in numbers stations. The main thing I’m interested in is really the equipment and the spaces that people listen from.

You can read a little more about the project and see some sample images here: http://www.lewisbush.com/category/numbers-in-the-dark/

If you’re willing to help Lewis, please contact him via email: [email protected]

Socotra Island: Myke posts tracks from 2013 travels

Photos from the 2015 Dayton Hamvention Flea Market

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Weather yesterday morning at the Dayton Hamvention was quite pleasant even if a little fickle at times. I had time in the morning and an hour or so in the afternoon to browse the various treasures scattered about in the flea market section. Here are a few photos of the vintage gear I found:

My friend and ETOW volunteer, Christine, purchased the mint condition Zenith Transoceanic above. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a better example of a vintage Transoceanic 7000 for sale. A good bit of well-deserved beginner’s luck for Christine!

If you’re also at the Dayton Hamvention, please stop by table 411 in the Ball Arena and introduce yourself!

Jeff Murray presents: Love, Death & Shortwave

1932 Photos of the BBC Broadcasting House

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Last week, I discovered this amazing set of photos, via Flashbak.com, of the BBC Broadcasting House from 1932: click here to view the full set of photos.