Satellite data collection without a permanent antenna requires some planning. I usually find when the best passes are for the week, and see if I have free time in my schedule to run out and collect data. Programs like gPredict and websites like https://satnogs.org/, or apps like Heavens Above can use TLE data to calculate when the satellites are going to pass overhead.

TLE or Two Line Element data is a format for describing the orbits of satellites. NASA and NORAD developed a data format in the 70s to describe the orbits of satellites that can fit on a punch card. Long gone are punch cards, but the TLE format is still used today.

A big push from the Linux community in the last decade has been to make the Linux desktop experience more user friendly. A difficulty users have faced is dealing with the terminal, package managers, and dependencies. With Windows and MacOS, installing a desktop application usually only requires a few clicks. Package managers and dependencies can be difficult to navigate if users do not know about how shared libraries work, and how to navigate the terminal.

I wanted to host this blog on a real domain. No offense to DuckDNS, but I am committing to this project so I want Source to Sink to have source-to-sink.com to call home!

I setup the domain on Cloudflare. The domain is only $10 a year, and it comes with a lot of great features. This blog will focus on the API and Dynamic DNS.

Setup Cloudflare DNS Entry

First I will show how to set the DNS entry in Cloudflare.

Some quick tips on searching in nvim.

To search for a word in the current file:

:/your_word

Uses regex to search for the word in the current file. Use ’n’ to go to the next instance of the word, and ‘N’ to go to the previous.

To search for the word selected in visual mode, press * or #. This will search for the word under the cursor.

Now to find and replace, the %s command is used. For example:

I added a contact page to my blog. This page allows a reader to send me a message. Check it out here.

I used formsubmit to handle the backend of spam protection and anonimity. I used the boiler plate code from the website. First run locally on your development machine with your real email address. Send a test message through the form to get your API key. Then replace your real email address with the API key, and you are done!