Technology

Photoshop CS5 is an impressive bit of software. But I was having an issue, something that was just ruining the experience...

Large brushes would only be partially displayed, just a small corner of the brush, or only a small fragment. Even worse, the cursor would vanish as I attempted to select a menu or toolbar command. I could not find the cursor and would have to blindly move the mouse until it appeared somewhere on the screen. This was unacceptable. How could a major application like Photoshop have such a problem? I use large brushes, particularly the signature that I use to mark my photos for internet distribution.

Adobe help proved useless, repeated searches revealed no hints of the issue. I turned to a tried and true technique. Type the name of the application and a few key words to describe the problem into Google, then sort through the results. It was not easy, Phototshop is the subject of hundreds of forums and discussion groups, it took some refinement of the search to yield results.

Eventually, the Google search did turn up a hint, someone else had seen the same problem and thought it was a graphics card driver issue. A little more investigation shows that CS5 makes a fair amount of use of the new graphics cards to perform acceleration of various tasks. My NVIDIA GeForce 9500 GT card does provide these capabilities.

I just bought this graphics card, I used the drivers from the included disk. How old can they be? Turns out the drivers were substantially out of date, version 189.24. Download version 258.96, install, reboot and try again...

All is well.

Large brushes appear in their entirety, no vanishing act as you attempt to use the toolbars or menus. Just one more little mystery solved, one of those problems lent to us by the computer technology we rely upon. A test of skill to resolve, one that I passed, this time...

Yes, I was still using CS2. There has just been no overwhelming reason to upgrade, no reason to spend the money. I am not someone who needs to get the latest version of something, as long as what I have is doing the job.

Until now.

Eventually the new features and support for newer tech makes the decision swing in favor of buying the latest version. Support for the latest RAW file format was becoming a problem with CS2. I really wanted the lens correction features. And I will use it! Photoshop is an application I use nearly constantly, from working with my dive photos, shots taken on the job, to final processing of astrophotos.

So far my impressions have been good. The tabbed image area is nice. There are some nice improvement to zooming, I love the pixel grid that appears when fully zoomed in. Some significant changes, and a lot of nice little touches that improve the usability.

I did have a major problem with the new software, one that took me over an hour to solve. Brushes were NOT working. They would paint, but you could not see where the cursor was. Fixed now, more on that in another post.

For now I am just playing with the software to learn my way around and explore the new features. Thus the photo seen on the right. Overall the new version has been easy to move into. Most of the menus and features are in the same places, and what did get moved does seem to be an improvement. I am certain time will reveal new quibbles, little complaints about the software, those will always be. But I look forward to what I can do with Photoshop CS5.

We live in a world where it becomes a normal thing to have a computer available wherever you go. Even more strangely, we feel oddly disconnected anytime we cannot get a broadband signal and access the whirling virtual world of the internet where so much of our modern lives now takes place.

My portable connection usually takes place through a small machine I bought nearly a year ago. At the time I was enthralled by the idea of a small, inexpensive, portable machine that I could use to solve a number of needs. The netbook craze was in full flood at the time, and I wondered if such a machine would prove useful. Certainly the price was right.

Despite the attractiveness of the sexy little machines I hesitated, I have gotten to the point where I try to ask a few questions of myself before I buy. Chief among these thoughts is a simple criteria for evaluating potential value... Will I use it?

After weeks of research I decided on a product from the company that started the netbook craze, Asus. While they were currently releasing a new model, accompanied by a level of hype typical during the height of any fad, I decided on a slightly older model that had the features and performance I was looking for, the Eee PC 1000HE.

What could have been an impulse decision turned out to be a surprisingly good choice. In less than a year this little computer has taken photos of stars and planets, voyaged around Alaskan icebergs, and regularly climbed above the clouds to help maintain one of the world's largest telescopes. I use it to give presentations to the astronomy club, develop microcontroller code, and serve as a serial terminal to control various devices. I use it for work often enough that I wrote off a good portion of the cost on last year's taxes. A few passwords and this little computer can log into the observatory systems to control everything from a temperature logger in the basement to the three hundred ton telescope itself.

Yes, it is only a netbook. Yes, it has limited performance specifications. The simple fact is that it does the job it is intended to do.

The netbook features a smallish keyboard that is sometimes a challenge for my fat fingers, only 2Gb of RAM, the hard drive is full... again... and the screen is only 1000x600 pixels. The processor is underpowered, a YouTube video will bog it down. Don't even think about running video editing software on it. Indeed, performance is distinctly improved by keeping the installed software to the absolute minimum. And yet the machine is one that has become quite valuable to me.

I wonder about an even better portable platform. The iPad demonstrates a tempting form factor and a beautiful interface. But I have major issues in owning a machine that I cannot freely transfer software to and from, and that I cannot use to develop my own software on the fly. A Unix or Windows machine with a good browser and Python installed is just what I need for much of my computing uses.

I suppose what I really want is a mid-sized tablet PC, running a Unix operating system, integrated WiFi and with a few USB ports a necessity. While there are a few machines that meet that description currently available, there will be a lot more, with ever increasing feature sets, in the wake of the the iPad.

In the meantime, my little netbook is going to see a lot more use.

PVC pipe, bilge pump motors, zip-ties, lots of wire and a little ingenuity... What it takes to build an underwater remotely operated vehicle (ROV).

Put the challenge to middle and high school students and you have a great way to teach engineering and science. The challenge may seem daunting, but the kids will prove that it is completely possible. The 2010 MATE Big Island Regional Underwater ROV Competition did just that, with impressive results.

Tens team competed this year, including two from Oahu and another from Kauai. They were joined by a number of teams from across the Big Island, a few of which have participated for several years now.

The mission this year is one based on our Hawai'i volcanoes, specifically the offshore active volcano, Loihi. Years ago the University of Hawaii deployed an undersea laboratory on the volcano. Called HUGO, the equipment worked for several years then failed, probably when the cable attaching the observatory to land was damaged. While HUGO is real, the simulated mission for the aspiring ROV builders is to resurrect HUGO, or at least a mock-up on the bottom of a swimming pool.

The mission is not simple, and no team managed to complete all of the possible tasks. Deploy a hydrophone, maneuver through a cave, collect specimens of an unknown crustacean, measure water temperatures, collect a sample of a bacterial mat, and more. No matter the cave was made of PVC pipe and tarp, the crustaceans from fishing lures and wire, the bacterial mat was gelatin, it was an impressively difficult task.

Even more impressive was watching the teams of middle and high school students navigating their craft through the course. There was a lot a variation in the teams. Some teams had difficulty simply maneuvering. Other ROV's moved quickly and confidently through the course, with tools that made short work of each challenge.

Hilo High dominated the competition, no surprise, this is a veteran team returning to the pool with a lot of experience. Their ROV performed extremely well, showing the difference that good design can achieve. It was the two teams from Highlands Intermediate on Oahu that impressed me. I had the fortune of judging the in pool performance for both teams. Simple, clean designs that preformed beautifully. It was clear that these teams had practiced, the piloting was superb and they were well organized, knowing right were to go for maximum mission points.

This was the third year I have helped judge the competition, the second for Deb. Both of us we quickly put to work. I did safety inspections, then joined Deb at poolside to judge the missions. We may have been exhausted at the end of the day, but we both had a lot of fun.

This year the national competition will take place right here in Hilo. At the end of June the best teams from across the United States, and a few from across the globe, will come to the Big Island to prove who's team and ROV is the best. Hilo High School and a team from Highlands Intermediate both qualified to participate this year. The competition is going to be intense.

Here is a number certain to get the attention of the Twitterers... A market research firm, Pear Analytics, did a survey of Twitter messages and found that 40% of the messages were "pointless babble". Another similar proportion were conversational messages and only 8.7% were informational in content, messages of "value".

From my own informal survey of the system these numbers seem about right. But this does not mean Twitter is useless. Services like Twitter are still new and what role such messaging systems will play in the information future is yet to be seen. While 90% of the messages are of little value, the last percentage may be the important part that makes a service worthwhile. A social experiment of very sizable proportions in how we will use our technology.

Has somebody already coined a term for Twitter babble? Twabble?

Seven hundred miles in a 2010 Ford Mustang. I did not realize that a simple answer at the rental car desk would result in another dimension to our vacation, a bit of luck adding to the fun.

The agent gave me a choice... A PT Cruiser or a Mustang? Nothing to consider here, I had ten hours of freeway driving to get to my destination and back. I was not going to do that run in a PT Cruiser with no cruise control (how can you call that a Cruiser?). I had reserved a midsized car for a reason, comfort on the long road from Seattle to La Grande. I did not expect a Mustang, but the opportunity was not to be turned down.

Good news for the Hawai'i teams in the international MATE ROV competition! These teams put impressive efforts into their ROV's, it was a pleasure to judge them during the regional competitions in Hilo. Looks like the efforts paid off at the national competitions at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy.

With one team taking 4th place and out other teams placing quite well. A number of these teams have been doing this competition for a couple years now, the experience really shows. Looking forward to the international competition taking place in Hilo next year!

I pass along word from Gary Fujihara, a gentleman who works tirelessly to promote science and engineering education on the Big Island...

Aloha,

I just received word from IRTF Electronics Tech Darryl Watanabe from Boston, that the Mauna Kea Education Academy (a homeschooled student team based in Hilo, and of which two of Darryl's sons are members) and their Delta Shark ROV (Remote Operated Vehicle) took 4th Place in the
MATE International underwater robotics competition in Buzzard's Bay.
Kudos also to Moanalua High (16th place) and Kealakehe Intermediate (24th place) who also represented Hawai'i most admirably.

Please help congratulate this fine group of youngsters on their superb efforts and on bringing pride and honor to Hilo, the location for the 2010 MATE International ROV competition next year.

More info: http://astroday.net/

Gary Fujihara
UH Institute for Astronomy

They are made of PVC pipe, nylon zip-ties, wire, bilge pump motors and dreams. They race to complete a task guided by camera eyes, with young hands at the controls. The 2009 MATE Big Island Regional Underwater ROV Competition was a demonstration of our next generation of engineers and innovators, and a wonderful example of garage engineering.

This year was again held at the Sparky Kawamoto Swim Stadium in Hilo and I had again volunteered to be a judge. Why not? This was too much fun. I joined with other engineers from Keck, Liquid Robotics and a couple professors from the UofH to see just how well these students could rise to the challenge. My wife also volunteered this year, helping score missions at poolside and from her account having a great time doing it.

The mission was not simple. The ROV had to rescue a crippled submarine sitting on the bottom. First by surveying the damage, then performing tasks such as delivering an air line, opening a hatch to deliver a rescue pod, or docking with the sub. No matter that the sunken vessel was actually a collection of milk crates at the bottom of a swimming pool, the mission was not easy.

Python 3k release is imminent. This powerful scripting language is behind much of the Keck Interferometer and other observatory systems. I also use Python for developing and maintaining the observing database on Darker View.

There are some serious changes, from what I can see all for the good. There is an issue of backwards compatibility, as the language has matured it has grown but retained all of the old "bad" ways of doing things. This release cleans out all of the old crud, which may require some revision of old code to bring it back into spec.

Python 3.0, also known as “Python 3000” or “Py3K”, is the first ever intentionally backwards incompatible Python release. There are more changes than in a typical release, and more that are important for all Python users. Nevertheless, after digesting the changes, you’ll find that Python really hasn’t changed all that much – by and large, we’re mostly fixing well-known annoyances and warts, and removing a lot of old cruft.

If you need a simple, free, open source programming language that can be used to program simple tasks or complex applications, take a look at Python. Download at www.Python.org.

Due to an escalating assault of comment spam I have been forced to activate moderation for all comments. I didn't want to do this, preferring to keep it easy to comment, but I have been deleting 10-20 spam comments each day that slip past the filters.

Sorry.

Last winter we had a film crew from National Geographic up at the summit. They were putting together a series called 'Engineering Connections' covering some of the notable engineering achievements of recent years. The series includes episodes on the Taipei Tower, the Airbus 380, and Keck!

I was present for some of the filming at the summit, filling in for our liaison and standing behind the camera as the narrator, Richard Hammond, did some of the exterior scenes. It was a fantastic day for either filming or simply still photography. We had several feet of recent snow mixed with heavy fog wafting over the summit alternating with clear skies. The film crew cameraman was in heaven. I remember pointing behind him as the fog opened up around Gemini, his eyes went wide and he grabbed for his heavy production camera as we both captured the shot.

Given that we do not have cable, or even television reception at our house, I have never seen the episode myself. There are a few times when cable would be nice, but those times are rare, and usually I get a chance to see the show in some other format.

We will be showing this program and inviting the public to the observatory on Sep. 4th at 7pm. Come to the W.M. Keck Observatory headquarters in Waimea and join us in the Hualalai Conference Room (directly off the main parking lot on the west end of the building). It should be interesting as some observatory staff will be present to answer questions about the program.

Weather permitting, I will be providing a telescope for viewing after the showing. I know that Waimea can be a bit iffy when it comes to clear skies, but hopefully we can get some nice views of Jupiter and maybe a few other objects.

I am continually amazed at the amount of spam that is directed at this website. When I checked the reject log again, a month after deleting it, I found it had grown to over 79 megabytes in only 36 days! There were thousands upon thousands of rejected comment postings. I deleted the log in the morning and found that it had grown to 669 rejected messages only ten hours later, a rate of well over a thousand rejections each day.

I did have a dozen comment spams make it through the filters this week, but a few adjustments seems to have stopped that for a while.

The contents of most of these messages were pretty objectionable. Porn seems to be the major subject, followed in a much smaller proportion by medical improbabilities and prescription drug sites.

The entire effort of the spam senders seem to be simply to place links in a site that is well indexed by the search engines. Best guess is that a decent rating by Google attracts the spammers, the price I pay for good content that the search engines seem to like.

The end result is a real hatred for the spammers, the very word 'spam' becoming maligned across the internet. This is an odd lingual dichotomy for me, since in Hawai'i the original version of the word, the canned meat product, is well regarded. My usual supermarket has no less than four feet of an aisle, all four shelves, devoted to Spam. I never knew it came in so many varieties and flavors. When I recently had some it was not as bad as I remembered, though I doubt Spam will ever become a regular part of my diet.

What do you do with a piece of electrical equipment that refuses to work? Do you just throw it out and buy a new one? Or maybe, you attempt to repair the equipment. When faced with this decision I rarely hesitate, I go for the screwdriver.

In this case I had an LDC500 Laser Diode Controller that blew its fuse the moment you turned it on. An experienced electronics tinkerer has no reservation about opening up the case of the malfunctioning gear and poking around. Maybe you can find the problem, maybe you discover that the gear is destined for the trash. At least you know you tried to fix it. The only real risk in attempting repair is the time you may invest in the attempt. Do you spend the time? Can you spend the time when you have other things that need to be done? Do you allow pieces of broken gear to accumulate?

In this case the decision to repair the equipment was the right one. Opening the case of the controller the issue was quickly found. Trapped under the circuit board there was a little stainless steel nut. It had been shorting a power lead to the case and causing the blown fuses. A thorough examination showed that the nut did not come off of anything in the laser controller. It had to have come through one of the ventilation openings in the case and rattled around until it jammed in a location where it was noticed. A location where it stopped the controller from working.

In aviation there is a term for this, FOD, for Foreign Object Damage, a real concern around jet engines. But this can be an issue in any arena as demonstrated by a simple nut in the wrong place.

All too easily a short circuit can damage other components and destroy the device. In this case we were lucky, it shorted from the transformer power lead to case ground, so no other component was subject to the high current. When the controller was powered back on everything worked satisfactorily. A $950 piece of equipment is salvaged and put back in service.

Around the observatory the ability to repair the equipment is invaluable. Budgets are limited and unexpected expenses from expensive gear failures are not appreciated. Sometimes you can not simply go out and buy replacements, some of the specialized gear was one of a kind to start with. Some of the older equipment is obsolete and no longer made by the manufacturer. Lose the wrong piece of gear and the entire multi-million dollar telescope sits closed for the night. Spares are kept on hand for most of the critical components, but once the spare is put in service you are under pressure to fix the malfunctioning original.

The resourcefulness and capabilities of the staff are simply amazing. Even when presented with the staggeringly complex equipment that keeps the observatory running there is seldom a time that much time is lost due to equipment failures. When a problem occurs the team does move into action fairly quickly, either fixing the problem or working around it to keep the telescopes on-sky.

Most of the instruments I work with are cooled by liquid nitrogen to allow them to detect the wavelengths of infrared light that the interferometer works in. Liquid nitrogen is interesting stuff, it seems odd to watch what is essentially liquid air dancing in droplets and boiling violently on a surface that is merely room temperature. I don't get to work with liquid nitrogen very often as this is normally supplied to the instruments with an automatic filling system that brings the liquid down to the instruments in the basement in a set of vacuum insulated pipes. On occasion, during some maintenance procedures, we do manually fill the detector dewar and work with liquid nitrogen by hand.

For one of our instruments, the nuller detector KALI, mere liquid nitrogen is not enough, we use liquid helium. This stuff isn't just cold, it is really, really cold. The boiling point of liquid helium is 4°K, allowing us to cool the instrument to four degrees above absolute zero. This is within one degree of being as cold as interstellar space. In more familiar temperature units this is -269° Centigrade, or if you prefer, −452° Fahrenheit. There is no auto fill system for this detector and we always fill the dewar by hand, keeping it cold only when needed, during an observing run or specific system tests.

Liquid helium is even weirder stuff, it flashes into gas the moment it touches air, but in the process condensing all of the water and even sometimes nitrogen and carbon dioxide into instant snow. Clouds of vapor are blowing around making any operation with helium look like a scene from an old horror flick. Air itself will condense on tubing containing liquid helium, droplets of liquid nitrogen running down the pipe as water runs down the sides of a cold soda can.

Working with things like this I am always reminded that science can be really cool.

Pun intended.

A few of you noticed that my site crashed Friday, at least for anyone using Internet Explorer. All that an IE user saw was the cryptic, and fairly useless message "Internet Explorer cannot open the website http://www.darkerview.com/darkveiw/. Operation Aborted".

It seems the bug involved the Sitemeter service I use to count visitors and see which pages are popular. Since I generally use Firefox to view the site I didn't see anything wrong, until it was pointed out to me. (Thanks Rick!!)

Thanks to the timely alert I deleted a bit of scripting and my blog was working again in a few minutes. It turns out thousands of sites that use Sitemeter were affected, the echoes of this event are still ringing in the blogosphere. While Sitemeter had admitted their scripts were at fault the net effect may be a black eye for IE, since Firefox worked just fine through the whole thing. There are a lot of blog comments to the effect of "...use a real browser and ditch IE..."

Sitemeter has fixed the issue, and I can put things back the way they were. The service is useful, it lets me know what I am doing right or doing wrong. A number of interesting results pop out when reading the statistics...

My Red LED Lamp page continues to be the most popular first destination page outside the main blog page. This page places very well in Google searches on any of a wide range of key words involving LED, lamp and battery power.

About 30-50% of the hits on the page come from Google searches. There are dozens of key words that my site places very well on searches, often first page or even the first few results.

Another popular search hit is anything 'Canon G9'. Maybe I need to post some more G9 stuff!

Most satisfyingly, there is a steady, if slow, upward trend in readership. maybe I am doing something right!