http://www.customvisuals.com/index.htmlCustom Visuals Newsenmgs@customvisuals.comCopyright 2009-2011 Custom Visuals, LLC2009-08-23T11:51:43-05:00 hourly 1 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00 Fri, 26 Jun 2009 21:47:05 -0500mgs@customvisuals.comSatelliteDefenseIDL2009-08-23T11:51:43-05:00http://www.customvisuals.com/weblog/files/39937a6ed7bb9325b99c61d9fa283959-3.php#unique-entry-id-3http://www.customvisuals.com/weblog/files/39937a6ed7bb9325b99c61d9fa283959-3.php#unique-entry-id-3ENVI (now part of ITT). This is a high end image processing and remote sensing package that is aimed straight at the type of data WIS produced, so it was a natural match to help develop and analyze WIS products. The purchase requisition was for somewhere in the $8,000 range if I recall correctly, but we were unable to purchase it due to the budget cut. ... The following year, we put ENVI in as the first item to purchase for our project and received it immediately. ... Considering my salary, overhead costs, lost time to work on other tools, etc., Hughes un-saved about $90,000 by eliminating the $8,000 purchase order. ...During the year this budget issue took place, I switched from an employee to a consultant/contractor for Hughes and also began teaching IDL classes (ENVI is written in IDL) outside of Hughes for Research Systems. One of the items I negotiated with Research Systems as part of teaching the training classes was an ENVI license for my own use. ... By the time WIS was utilizing ENVI to a larger degree for processing and analysis, I was pretty much the only person familiar with the software on the team and I was working less on the project. About a year later, I left the SBRC division and started working completely on my own not too much longer after that. ]]>mgs@customvisuals.comSatelliteDefenseIDLPV-Wave2009-07-11T06:01:18-05:00http://www.customvisuals.com/weblog/files/33d39e71809d80a10a6fd298e949d03b-2.php#unique-entry-id-2http://www.customvisuals.com/weblog/files/33d39e71809d80a10a6fd298e949d03b-2.php#unique-entry-id-2MODIS satellite sensor was being built by Hughes and I was tasked with building an algorithm test bed for it. The group I was part of had spent several years working with the IDL programming language and had sent me off to an IDL class at Research Systems’ (the IDL developers, now a division of ITT) offices in Colorado. ...As specified in the program specs, we had to deliver all new code in either C or PV-Wave, IDL would not be accepted. We pushed back for some clarification on that, and it was reiterated that IDL could not be used because PV-Wave was specified by NASA. This wasn’t a huge issue since PV-Wave was based on a copy of the IDL source code sold from Research Systems to Visual Numerics. ... In the years after the source code had been sold, both companies had developed it in parallel, but different ways. ...As it happens, a large portion of what I was working on required a GUI for the engineers to be able to quickly load, apply and view the results of varying algorithms, so this had a pretty big effect on me. ... Also, functions that had some options in IDL had different options in PV-Wave as both companies extended the language in different ways. ...After about 3 months of development, we were demoing our applications for NASA on their systems when we hit a snag. After loading our code and data and bringing up the GUI to start processing some of the data, a dialog box came up indicating we were not licensed to load the data. After bringing in a couple of the technical staff, it was determined that the NASA team we were working with had not purchased PV-Wave for the project, they had just requested a demo license and had never run it beyond watching the demo screens. ... It cost some additional time in development for me to come up to speed with the PV-Wave way of GUI design and the occasional issue of having to rewrite functions from our IDL library to work within the PV-Wave library. The project continued on in PV-Wave of course, and was eventually completed, delivered and accepted along with all of the other software, hardware, manuals, etc. that you might imagine goes along with providing a sensor that will spend years operating in a satellite. ]]>mgs@customvisuals.comWeather2009-07-03T05:53:31-05:00http://www.customvisuals.com/weblog/files/aaff3c06369aaa579d887d8a9c9f5fd6-1.php#unique-entry-id-1http://www.customvisuals.com/weblog/files/aaff3c06369aaa579d887d8a9c9f5fd6-1.php#unique-entry-id-1 20), and for some of the lower priority stages to get ahead of the higher priority stages. So, the 2nd prototype is now under development. This time around I’m using Parallel::ForkManager for the first time. That should make it easier to control the stages and keep things running in a more orderly fashion. Hopefully, there will be a much smaller “lessons learned” phase after this.]]>mgs@customvisuals.comGeneral2009-06-26T21:47:30-05:00http://www.customvisuals.com/weblog/files/7299827b1161e1bcfcb09d1f017a988c-0.php#unique-entry-id-0http://www.customvisuals.com/weblog/files/7299827b1161e1bcfcb09d1f017a988c-0.php#unique-entry-id-0Real Mac Software’s RapidWeaver, which seems like the right blend of ease of use, functionality, customization and expandability.]]>