The Earth Is Square

Pack the car, cram in the snacks, throw in the kids and dogs... off we go!

Heading into Pennsylvania today to visit the in-laws/out-laws and family for a week.  And get stuck doing all the big chores when I get to my spawning grounds (Any Pennsylvania GIS bloggers want to come help re-roof a garage?).

Also going to play with an open source street / navigation software that can plug into my GPS, I'll write up about that next week (And also play with GPS in World Wind).

Going to be just north of I80 between Williamsport and Scranton if any local GIS bloggers want to meet up for a drink next week.

That is how much "raw" data is waiting on the new World Wind Central servers to be processed and added into the World Wind ZoomIt! layer.

This includes imagery from the USGS, all of Pennsylvania at high resolution and several other sources.  Once this is all processed it will only take up about 700-800GB of space, they they can start downloading again.  I believe there is about 6TB of total space, with room to add more hard drives.

I will check and see how Gigs of imagery we have on the World Wind Central web site.

Some people may be noticing with their latest version of World Wind that is seems to start very slowly after a while. One of the reasons for this is because in the <user folder>\Application Data\NASA\World Wind\1.4.0.1\ you may have thousands of DEBUG* files.

I have had over 60,000 at one time.. caused my whole computer to become unstable till I got all the files deleted.

Below is a DOS batch file I wrote to delete the files before they become a pain.

@echo off

echo Debug File Eraser
echo The file deletes all your World Wind 1.4.0.1 debug files,
echo this is best used after each time you run World Wind.
echo ---------------------------------------------------------

pause

echo Erasing World Wind 1.4 DEBUG files

c:
cd C:\Documents and Settings\[USER FOLDER]\Application Data\NASA\World Wind\1.4.0.1\
del DEBUG*

echo Deletion Completed

pause

Just copy and paste the above into a file called something like "WW_DEBUG_Delete.bat" and save it someplace convent.  Be sure to change [USER FOLDER] to your user name.

Typically, I run the batch file after each time I use World Wind. Just remember developers, building and releasing in debug mode is bad

I don't talk about work on the blog, work has no need to be on the blog.  Yet today I'll kinda break that rule I have but not name the work though.

I came in the office today and noticed that on my cube my name is gone and someone else's name is there.  I check other cubes and there are quite a few cubes with the names changed to either someone else, changed to "Empty" or changed to "Pending New Hire".  Thing is.. there have been no emails or notices going out that people will be relocated or anything like that.

So, talk to my manager and some others, everyone is confused.  One guy I talked to knows some of the "new name people" and he gave a call.. they had no idea they had a name up in the local office.  Some more digging around finds out that the only people with names removed are all the contractors.  So, in a future move to happen, preference is given to the hired in people and that contractors can be shoved out of the way.  Contractors are also not to have any names up on the cubes at all now as well.. contractors are also not listed on the online "people finder".

So, maybe sometime in the future, I will be kicked out of my cube of 4 years with nowhere to go "but there is plenty of open lab space".  This is not how you treat people and make them want to stay and work for your company.

I think it is time to seriously look into a new job elsewhere (Michigan is a pricey state to live and work in)  and actually get something closer to GIS and World Wind (It amazes people when I say I do all this WW stuff on the side).  Anyone hiring?

Well, been a while since I posted about World Wind Java Things have been slow, but that does not mean nothing is happening of course.

pred on the World Wind Forum has been working on getting the WWJava code to work as a browser applet and he has been making some steady progress. He has a link up now where you can try his changes and launch a WWJava Browser Applet session. Warning though, I have a fast connection and a pretty good computer with 4gig of ram .. and the applet still took about 6 minutes to fully load up.

For those that are waiting for it to load, or don;t want to try just now.. some screen shots for your enjoyment.

First two shots are of the Blue Marble with a compass, overview position marker and an GeoRSS Earthquake list shown.

Zooming in on an earthquake, clicking on the icon opens a new browser window with the related page loaded.  The imagery also changes from BMNG to the i-Cubed Landsat.

Zooming into North America, zooming into San Francisco loads the USGS Urban imagery.

Viewing the same area in 3D now.

If you are interested in the computer use while I was running the browser applet, here is the average numbers for firefox I was able to capture in a screen shot.

This has to be the longest prep / cook time food item I have tried to make in a long while.  I didn't make my own marinade this time, I just used a store bought seasoning / cure package.

So, on friday when I got home from work I got the steaks out ~ 2 lbs worth and cut them into strips after trimming what fat there was on them (venison is very lean meat if you do not already know).  Them I mixed up the seasoning for 2lbs of meat and coated all the meat then placed in a plastic bag to refrigerate for 24+ hours (I let it go for longer and cooked the meat today).  But even the cooking takes a while as well.. at least 2 hours at 200F in the oven.  But the meat came out quite good though, and probably will not last that long.

Will be making a lot more I think.