Matters of screen size

In "Is Google Making Us Stupid?", Nicholas Carr looks into his own experiences and perceptions with the impact of the internet on his mind.

Naturally, when the researcher and the instrument or experiment are one in the same, there is no science, not even the soft or subjective science of statistical analysis -- at least not until one is able to condense a proper experiment from the collection of thoughts and ideas that emerge from the myriad processes of self analysis.

However the subject is an important one, as the impact of the internet on our lives has been enormous. Moving virtually the whole world population through short internet decades of awareness and development. We went through the flame wars, when we discovered the false intimacy of the internet. We went through the face book, when we discovered new kinds of vanity and attention in available degrees of fame. It's been a fire hose in the gardens of our respective consciousnesses, clearing away everything but the very earth of self.

We've passed through these doors with a sense of the goodness and benefit from these adventures. And certainly that's true. Or can be.

Most recently I've been looking for a solution to the problem that Nicholas describes. Managing the importance of my respective interests. The least important is the easiest to do, and can sometimes fill time while important ideas are baking. But sorting out the baking from the silly pleasures of innocent social intercourse has been in need of a solution. The one I have found may be interesting.

Sometimes one may pass a decade simply switching effectively between desktop windows and satisfying various interests and demands effectively. But if this has stopped working for you, then here's another way.

Large differences in display screen size have completely different emotional and psychological impact. From a full size cinema screen, to a home theater screen, to desktop computer screen to laptop or handheld screens -- each captivates ones mind in a very different way. The larger sizes have a substantial emotional and psychological impression, and the smallest sizes are completely bounded under ones own ego and comprehension.

Here's a recipe for success. Use your largest computer screen for your vital work, and a smaller device for interest or entertainment activities. Maintain a strict regime for a week and the difference should become apparent enough to motivate the maintenance of the technique.

My advice, go to the movie theater only for good movies, unless of course you want to play with your mind (not recommended after age 20).

GD Astro

Another fun application for Gap Data, Gap Cubed or the Gap Data Astro.

GD Astro is an information architecture for the parametric data sets in space dynamics, following LORV.

See also The ITAR Web Whistle.

GD Astro motivates work on the Unique from HashUnique switch for ODL/BigTable, and integrated Protection as begun in AdminReadWrite.

See also Web Net Notes.

Cube sat web

Open NASA @ Ideascale (api) is interesting


A Cube Sat Web is a self funded open source project.

A flying Cube Sat costs about as much as car, but here's a way to see one on orbit for free.

Cube Sat

The Cube Sat is a camera with a long fixed focal length cassegrain aperture.

The camera is a CMOS sensor with memory connected to a radio transmitter. It takes a still image at a scheduled time in the future. It downloads an image from memory on command. The image metadata includes satellite telemetry and time stamp.

Web

The Web runs on Google App Engine. A logged in user can schedule a photograph, receive it and share it.

The full sourcecode for the web application is in open source, so anyone can copy the web site to charge fees or accept donations in order to fund the building and launch of a Cube Sat. So, caveat emptor applies.

Cube Sat Web can be social or grouping or independent.

Done before

Of course people are doing many things like this, for example WikiSat.

This essay is a cool example for Gap Data, and writing down the idea in one place.

Information Architecture

The Cube Sat camera can use rotation with time in its photo command. Rotation is relative to the frames received. The time is in future or as soon as possible.

Ground Stations

Telemetry and telecommand needs one or many radio ground stations. Some may be able to offer ground station design and construction. The Cube Sat Web may register and schedule ground stations, or receive upload data files.

Web User Interface

The Cube Sat Web user interface presents the telecommand of historical moments in the chain of photography. The image store could be Flikr, Picassa, Apps or S3. User telecommand input can be interpreted for a nearest neighbor, in camera flying and archive views. (Placeholder image, time lapse motion lines are more realistic)

Flight Testing

Weather balloon flights can generate interest, and test hardware with temperature and distance. Suspended on its orbital axis, a balloon flight can demonstrate camera rotation control.

Cube Sat Web Prize

A two balloon flight imaging each other simultaneously in live radio image retrieval. Electrical and optical techniques exclusively.

Sun Pointing

A shutter should protect the aperture from entering Sunlight via sun sensors. Hardware based solar protection on orbit simplifies the security model to one virtually public.

Knowledge Base Development

An article for Open NASA @ Ideascale tries to present simple ideas from concurrent and knowledge based engineering. These ideas are very productive for web sites.

As an illustration, this blog post could be the root of a tree of project requirements, design and development data.

My own personal notes for Gap Data are available here.

Help wanted on Project LORV

Project LORV is a research project in support of OREKIT, an open source space dynamics library in Java from CS including Luc Maisonobe.

This experiment in Software Engineering explores the objective to expand OREKIT's application and developer audience as broadly as possible -- for anyone with interest to find great convenience in scripting with OREKIT, and have a full and complete world of space dynamics math and physics at their fingertips.

Project LORV needs programming support in java to port the test suites in OREKIT 4.1 into a collection of simple, junit independent, main programs over lorv's experimental "ore" packages.

It's possible that almost anyone interested could lend a hand in this work, as it is transpositions of working code from names like "org.orekit" to "ore" and adapting some API changes.

Anyone interested should join the LORV discussion list, and introduce yourself. Or contact myself, John Pritchard, via jdp@syntelos.org or john.pritchard@teamfrednet.org. Or send me code.

Each test case would be a java (main) program working on the LORV package set and performing System exit with value one on failure and zero on success. As in the following example.

package lorv.test.bodies;

import ore.bodies.Sun;
import ore.errors.OrekitException;

/**
 * Test implied data loading.
 * @author jdp
 */
public class DataLoad {

    public static void main(String[] argv){
        try {
            Sun sun = Sun.Instance();

            System.exit(0);
        }
        catch (OrekitException exc){
            exc.printStackTrace();
            System.exit(1);
        }
    }
}

This work would go into a "lorv/test" location, to be created.

Independence from junit is chosen for simplicity: no more than necessary. These tests are more scripts than units.

Formatting without tab characters, four space tabbing. And I'll format as necessary, too.

Write to be read