Notes from the network rack and radio bench
A place to document my projects in networking, radio, software, and machine learning, and what I learn along the way.
Hello, world. Welcome to plaing.ca.
I’m Patrick Laing, a network architect in Port Alberni, BC, and an amateur radio operator under the callsign VA7EET. My work is in telecommunications and service provider networking. Outside work, I tend to end up with a radio experiment, some software to write, or another reason to rearrange the home lab.
My interests often meet at the same question: how much useful information can you get through a constrained system? That might mean limited bandwidth, a noisy radio channel, or a finite amount of computing power. Neural video compression, experimental modems, and automated Morse code decoding are some of the ways I’ve been exploring that question.
This site gives those projects somewhere to live beyond my own notes. I’ll write about what I’m trying, what works, and the troubleshooting it takes to get there. Some posts will cover finished work; others will be experiments with questions still open.
For more background, see the About page.