On 20/02/2026 05:26, Avaniparekh--- via Silklist wrote:
Hi everyone, Iβm Avani. Bangalore-based.
Welcome! I'm Alaric, Gloucester (UK) based. I live with my disabled wife and two children (well, one's off at university right now so it's just the three of us - but the eldest will return this summer). We have three cats, two chickens, and three rabbits...
For a living, I work for a consultancy, solving data problems, usually for government departments. Currently, that means building a search interface over a dataset of cancer genomics: they got about thirteen thousand people with cancer, and did a whole genome sequence of the person and of a sample cell from their tumour. By comparing the two, they can find the original mutation that turned a healthy cell into a cancer and the subsequent evolution that cell has done to figure out how to survive the immune system's attempts to kill it. By seeing how those genetic changes affect the proteins and stuff made by the cell, doctors can understand how cancer survives - and figure out better drugs to stop it surviving. I'm doing tecchy database stuff to help them search this huge dataset, but having to remember loads of genetics from long-forgotten school biology, which is fun!
For fun, I do too many things to list. Conservation forestry, stone carving, metalworking, programming, amateur radio, running a hackspace, volunteering with kids, exploring, reading, ... :-)
My current project is: my wife and youngest child are both often involved in public performances, and these days there's a lot of wireless equipment - wireless microphones, wireless stage lighting controllers - and they're often going wrong. At a dance performance my kid did a few weeks ago they had to keep making announcements begging people to turn off their phones as they believed interference from them was the reason the stage lights kept cutting out, for instance. It's often said that the 2.4GHz band (which many of these things use) is overcrowded, but I want to test if that's true - and maybe help track down problems. So I'm assembling a battery-powered pocket 2.4GHz diagnostics tool, based on a TinySA Ultra+ and a directional broadband antenna. I'm still waiting for some parts to arrive in the post, but when it's done, I'll bring it to these events; and if the wireless gear starts to fail I'll whip it out and scan the spectrum and wave my directional antenna around, and:
1) At the very least, satisfy my curiosity as to what's transmitting what.2) Ideally, actually track down what's interfering with what and be able to help (see also: https://xkcd.com/208/ )
-- Alaric Snell-Pym (M0KTN neΓ© M7KIT) http://www.snell-pym.org.uk/alaric/
OpenPGP_signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature
-- Silklist mailing list [email protected] https://mailman.panix.com/listinfo.cgi/silklist
