Kurt's Weblog

Unfortunetly, nobody else at eNavigation modified the Wikipedia AIS page. I was catching up on some reading and ran into part of my stack of documtation. Here is the update I just submitted. This is definitely very incomplete.

• ITU-R M.131-2 Technical Characterisics for a Universal Shipborne Automatic Identification System using Time Division Multiple Access in the VHF Maritime Mobile Band. Version 3 is in the works.
• ITU-R M.493-11 Digital Selective Calling System for use in the Maritime Mobile Service
• [[NMEA 0183]]
• IEC 60936-5 - Guidelines for the use and display of AIS information on Radar
• IE 60945 Maritime Navigation and Radio-communication Equipment and Systems - General Requirements - Methods of Testing and Required Test Results
• IEC 62320 - Maritime navigation and radiocommunication equipment and systems - Automatic Identification Systems - Part 1: AIS Base Stations - Minimum operational and performance requirements - methods of test and required test results
• IALA Navguide Dec 2001 - Chapter 4 - Universal Automatic Identification System (AIS)
• IALA Guideline No. 1028 - The Automatic Identification (AIS) Vol. 1, Part I, Operational Issues
• IALA Guidelines on the Universal Automatic Identification System (AIS), Vol. 1, Part II, Technical Issues
• IMO SN/Circ.236 - Guidance on the Application of AIS Binary Messages - Defines the 7 international test binary messages
• The Maritime Domain Awareness Data Sharing Community of Interest (MDA DS COI) Pilot, Data Vocabulary and Schemas, Version 1.0, 16-June-2006
• United States Voluntary Observing Ship Project ([[http://www.vos.noaa.gov/ VOS]])
• [[Lrit]] Long Range Identification and Tracking

Today, I'm doing a little bit of work with VRML 2.0 that was exported from LightWave. The conversion process does some strange things. After my quick conversion of a piece of geometry, it looks pretty bad:



My conversion process to strip down the object removes the VRML 2.0 appearance marks and I have to insert Inventor 2.1 ShapeHints like this:

ShapeHints {
                  vertexOrdering CLOCKWISE
                  shapeType SOLID
		  faceType UNKNOWN_FACE_TYPE
	   }

The results are more like the geometry expected by the people who work with Lightwave:

The American Club has a new video titled Stranger on the Bridge that talks to the deck crew of ships about working with pilots.

This week, we had a demonstration of the mapserver system from the Healy. The website that we saw is not open to the public, but they do have other sites that are open to anyone. Really great stuff with a lot of custom JavaScript. However they did say that they are planning to go to OpenLayers.

http://mapserver.eol.ucar.edu

MCA Rolls Out Phase 3 UK AIS [Hydro International - News]

The UK AIS network, which was developed by Kongsberg Norcontrol IT and
the MCA, went live in April 2006. All 18 MCA run Maritime Rescue
Co-ordination Centres (MRCC) are networked around the UK coast to
provide one integrated maritime domain awareness system...
...
hase three includes new functionality within the C-Scope User
Interface, including: BMT SARIS support - search and rescue graphical
display: VHF Direction Finding - triangulating position of a vessel
through radio transmission: Transmission and receipt of AIS Messages -
including safety text and control messages: Track reclassification -
mark specific vessels for easy identification and tracking: high
visibility warning object - no erroneous settings used for extended
periods.

Floating Computers Keep an Eye on the Oceans, which links to silicon.com's article

The article is more frustrating than helpful. Sites that make you go through 7 pages for a small article so that they can get 50 million banner adds in front of me drive me nuts. But it is good to see programs like argos get noticed.

The Met Office is taking part in a global programme to monitor the
world's oceans to improve understanding of how they influence climate
change.
.
The Argo programme uses thousands of floating devices like the one
pictured, which provide continuous data from even the remotest parts
of the world's oceans.
.
The Met Office manages the UK part of the programme and has deployed
around 230 Argo floats to date. It works in partnership with the
British Oceanographic Data centre, National Oceanography Centre in
Southampton and the UK Hydrographic Office.

Figure from UCSD:

Different bridge fender design might have averted bay oil spill [SFGate]

...
The accident in Portland's harbor caused no damage to the bridge or
the tanker, and unlike the Cosco Busan's crash into the Bay Bridge,
not a drop of oil was spilled.
.
The reason, transportation officials say, was a state-of-the-art
fender system designed to protect ships as well as the bridge.
.
"It was a pretty severe impact," said John Buxton, chief bridge
maintenance engineer for the Maine Department of Transportation. "But
(the fender system) worked perfectly."
...

Any one have a picture of the Portland bridge fender system that I can post?

Bridge's design fends off severe damage from tanker [Professional Mariner]

At 1645 on May 6, Hawk, a tanker transporting 11.3 million gallons of
No. 6 fuel oil from a refinery in the U.S. Virgin Islands, struck the
Casco Bay Bridge. The 31,709-grt tanker hit the bridge on its port
side between the No. 1 cargo tank and the forepeak. But a fender
system protecting the bridge pier absorbed the impact. There were no
injuries to the crew, no oil was spilled, and no damage was done to
the Greek vessel.
...

This image is from the USCG assesment video. I need a better image for sure.

I didn't get a chance to get a real picture, so here is out my window. There was at least an inch of snow on my car this evening. Pretty slushy out there right now.

Remko posted some notes about GMT on Mac OSX 10.5 in the GMT mailing list. I'm duplicating the notes here so that I don't loose them.

- Leopard has a new way of launching X11 (by itself) whenever you start an X
  application. But this requires some work to set up correctly if you have been
  fidgeting with X11 on Tiger.
  . Remove ~/.xinitrc. I had it so that X11 wouldn't automatically launch xterm.
    That won't happen anymore by default. It you want xterm, simply click the
    xterm icon in /usr/X11/bin or start xterm from the Terminal.app.
  . Remove X11 from your Login Items in the Accounts preference pane. Take if also
    out of the Dock so that you are not prone to start X11 from there. It doesn't work
    that way any longer.
  . Make sure NOT to set the DISPLAY environment variable. DO NOT put it in your
    .cshrc or .bashrc. X11 will not launch automatically when you do.
    MacOSX will set it to something like: tmp/launch-Uhmf6W/:0
    So type: echo $DISPLAY to check that's the case.
  . You may also want to say goodbye to .Xdefaults (at least font settings).
  . Now X11 should automatically launch when you type e.g. "gv" in a Terminal window.
  . By the way: also trash ~/.gv. The ghostscript setting -dGraphicsAlphaBits=4
    that I had in there made gv crash when is started plotting fonts.
- The preference file ~/Library/Preferences/org.x.X11_launcher.plist is created.
  When you just launch X11 applications from the Terminal, you can ignore it.
  But if you launch X11 manually by clicking the icon --which you shouldn't--
  it will launch xterm. It will also cause an additional launch of xterm when you
  click a file associated with an X11 application (see below).
  The xterm, I have learned, is just there to cause X11 to launch.
  You can avoid launching the xterm, but still have X11 be launched, type
  $ defaults write org.x.X11_launcher app_to_run /usr/X11/bin/xhost
  or edit the file mentioned above and change "xterm" to "xhost".
- The launcher is really nice. Without much ado you can now attach gv to launch
  when double clicking a .eps or .ps file. Much faster than launching Preview
  which will change your plot into an ugly PDF. Here are the steps:
  . Get XDroplets (http://www.rhythmiccanvas.com/software/xdroplets)
  . Unpack and ignore the "XDroplets Setup" !
  . Dig into XDroplets and move the X11-Others folder inside to your Applications
    folder. Inside are the goodies: ready to launch links to your favorite X11
    applications. Rename the folder if you want and trash stuff you don't need.
  . Go to any .eps file, select it, and click Cmd-I (Get info).
  . In the "Open with" portion, click the dropdown and select "Ghostview".
  . Click "Change All..." and "Continue".
  . Do the last three steps also for a .ps file.
  . Now every .eps and .ps file opens with ghostview.
- 3-Button emulation doesn't work (but 3-button mouse does). Fixed in available
  XDarwin release of Xquartz 1.2a3: http://www.x.org/wiki/XDarwin.
  You may need to activate 3-Button emulation again in the X11 Preferences.
- You couldn't drag X windows between Spaces. Fixed in Xquarts 1.2a7.
- If you want to feed X11 screens from a remote host back to your local host,
  make sure /etc/sshd_config on the remote host contains "X11Forwarding yes"
  and use ssh -X to log into the remote host.

First real winter snow of the season. There were a few flakes the other day, but it is now very white outside my office window! From John Kelly:

URGENT - WINTER WEATHER MESSAGE
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE GRAY ME
1008 AM EST TUE NOV 20 2007
.
...FIRST TASTE OF WINTRY WEATHER FOR MOST OF NEW HAMPSHIRE AND
WESTERN MAINE...
.
.A FRONTAL SYSTEM WILL STALL TO OUR WEST TODAY AND LEAVE THE COLD
AIR IN PLACE. PRECIPITATION IS STARTING OUT AS SNOW AND THE
MOUNTAINS WILL PICK UP BETWEEN 2 AND 5 INCHES. THERE BE PROGRESSIVELY
LOWER ACCUMULATIONS FURTHER SOUTH WITH LESS THAN AN INCH AT THE
COAST. SNOW WILL MIX WITH SLEET AND FREEZING RAIN IN NEW HAMPSHIRE
AND SOUTHERN MAINE...TRENDING MORE TOWARD RAIN NEAR THE COAST.
.
...WINTER WEATHER ADVISORY IN EFFECT UNTIL 5 PM EST THIS
AFTERNOON...
.
THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN GRAY HAS ISSUED A WINTER WEATHER
ADVISORY...WHICH IS IN EFFECT UNTIL 5 PM EST THIS AFTERNOON.
.
SNOW AMOUNTS WILL RANGE FROM 2 TO 4 INCHES IN NORTHERN NEW
HAMPSHIRE TO LESS THAN AN INCH NEAR THE COAST. THE SNOW WILL MIX
WITH SLEET AND FREEZING RAIN THIS AFTERNOON...AND TREND MORE
TOWARD RAIN NEAR THE COAST.

Oil spill hearing: Congress goes after Coast Guard [AP/ABCLocal]

...
"Something on board that ship went terribly wrong," says Admiral Crain
Bone, U.S. Coast Guard.
.
Admiral Craig Bone is the Coast Guard's second in command, in charge
of vessel safety. He wouldn't directly blame the captain of the
container ship. However, his response pointed in that direction. As
for the clean up, he said it was handled as well as could be expected.
...

NOAA's IncidentNews has a page on the M/V Cosco Busan

Here is an incident map from the USCG from 18-Nov.

Operational Overview Map [PDF]



Cosco Busan Unified Command Oil Spill Response Website

San francisco Oil Spill Hearings - A Response to Admiral Bone, USCG [gCaptain]

...
So the question becomes; "If AIS is a loved safety improvement
endorsed by maritime experts worldwide why does Captain Kelly (and
myself!) consider it antiquated?"
.
The reason is because we can do better! In the world of cutting edge
technology solutions are available now that would have given Cota and
VTS a much better chance of avoiding the incident. The problem, that I
suspect is an industry wide tendency, is two fold. First we are so far
behind the technology curve small improvements, like AIS, seem large
and exciting. Second, most licensed captains are Luddites (my self
included) who want to make sure a new system is reliable before
implementing it aboard ships.
.
I come to this conclusion because, despite my writings on the need to
improve shipboard technology, I initially had the same reaction as
Adm. Bone but quickly changed my mind. Why?  Because Capt. Kelly is
correct, our systems are antiquated and when new lifesaving
improvements become available we must break away from the statement
that has been rehearsed by ship captains for centuries; "Only history
will tell if this is a good idea". Exciting changes are happening
worldwide and improvements in communications (the number one failure
in all good incident chains) are leading the way. We must change with
the times and embrace technology as the benefit is a reduction of
incidents and a preservation of the environment and human life.
...

More on the hearings in SF: Hearing today at Presidio - tough queries for spill captain, pilot

And in terms of AIS, everyone keeps complaining about the Minimum Keyboard Display. I have to say that if all you have is an AIS with an MKD, you are not being a smart mariner. It doesn't cost much these days to buy a charting package that will do way better than the MKD's. The MKD is a seriously lame interface.

AIS makes its presence felt [Prefessional Mariner]

Another problem is that the display screen on the minimum keyboard
display (MKD) unit for AIS equipment is so small that it is not useful
for navigation, according to pilots and captains. The screen can be as
small as 4 inches wide by 2.5 inches tall.

This article rings true to me. I'm working to try to create several different standards that use XML and when we tried to work with GML, we really hit a wall. We are trying to avoid complexity such that our work will get used. Only other thing is that namespaces have been really painful for me. The seem to hurt more than they help. (Or I need to better learn how to use them.)

Standardize the jellybeans not the jars

...
A rule of thumb for many situations is that industry standard groups
(and, indeed, inhouse schema developers), may be well advised to
standardize data elements eagerly but container elements suspiciously:
standardize the jellybeans not the jars. The next bloke may likes your
jellybeans but have his own jars.
.
Various approaches to do this come to mind: think in terms of creating
a vocabulary rather than a language; split your industry standard in
two, with the tightly coupled elements in one normative section and
the loosely-coupled elements in another non-normative section, perhaps
with different namespaces even; use open content models and
order-independence for loosely-coupled elements.
...

Stephen is defending this afternoon:

UNH COMPUTER SCIENCE
Master's Thesis Defense
AUGMENTED HAPTIC INTERFACE FOR FLOW VISUALIZATION
by
Stephen Schaeffer
University of New Hampshire

 
Date: November 19, 2007
Time: 3:00 p.m.
Location:  Kingsbury N233
Abstract: A novel 3D computer interface is proposed in which a
physical handle containing force sensors and capable of simulating
virtual touch through force feedback is coupled to a variety of
virtual tools in a 3D virtual environment. The visual appearance of
each tool reflects its capabilities. At one moment a user might feel
they are holding a virtual grabber, activated by squeezing, and at
another moment they are holding a virtual turntable activated by
physical motion of a virtual wheel. In this way it is intended that
form and function can be combined so that users rapidly learn the
functional capabilities of the tools and retain this learning. It is
also intended that the tools be easy to use because of intuitive
mappings of forces to actions. A virtual environment is constructed to
test this concept, and an evaluation of the interface conducted.
.
Committee:
Advisor:  Dr. Colin Ware, CCOM
Dr. R. Daniel Bergeron, Computer Science
Dr. Jim Weiner, Computer Science

Debugging Python by ynniv has some interesting notes about using debuggers in python. I don't end up using the debugger much (or really at all). I did play with python debugging in Eclipse and that was pretty awesome. His work to trap exceptions in the debugger:

On the JavaScript front: putting rhino to work gives a tip on how to get a readline like interface for a javascript interpreter.

#!/bin/bash
dir=$(dirname $0)
export CLASSPATH=${CLASSPATH}${CLASSPATH:+:}${dir}/rhino/\*
echo using CLASSPATH=$(printenv CLASSPATH) > /dev/stderr
[ "$1" = "-f" ] || { RLWRAP="rlwrap -C js" ;}
exec $RLWRAP java ${JAVAOPTS} \
org.mozilla.javascript.tools.shell.Main -strict "$@"

Coast Guard deflects blame in Bay Area spill [latimes]

SAN FRANCISCO -- The Coast Guard said Friday that its radar systems
could not have clearly shown that a cargo ship was about to collide
into the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge and spill oil into the San
Francisco Bay.
...
John Meadows, a lawyer for the pilot, disputed McPherson's
characterization of the radar. "A properly functioning radar shows not
only the towers, but it will also show the piers and the buoys on
either side of the piers," Meadows said. "The VTS should have had
access to that. Any good, working radar would show these things."
...

Then there is some transcript of the VHF traffic:

...
"Roger, captain, are you still proceeding out?" Vessel Traffic Service
says at 8:29 a.m., according to a review of the audio.
.
"Traffic?" responds the pilot, acknowledging the communication.
.
"AIS shows you on 235 heading. What are your intentions? Over," VTS
asks. AIS is the Automatic Identification System, a shipboard tracking
system.
.
"Um, I'm coming around. I'm steering 280 right now," the pilot says,
indicating he was shifting the rudder as he made a turn.
.
"Roger, understand you're still intending the Delta-Echo span, over,"
VTS says, referring to the opening under the bridge between bridge
supports labeled Delta and Echo.
.
"Yeah, we're still Delta-Echo," says the pilot.
.
"Uh, roger captain," VTS says at 8:30.
.
At 8:32 the collision has occurred, and the pilot says: "Traffic, we
just touched the Delta span. I'm gonna go to trying to get our
anchor. Anchorage 9 ... Anchorage 7," the pilot says, suggesting some
confusion about where he was.
.
"Roger, unit Romeo at the Delta-Echo span, diverting to Anchorage 7,"
the Coast Guard acknowledges. Evidently the name Romeo was assigned to
the Cosco Busan.
...

Cosco Busan - Questions,Questions,Questions [gCaptain]

...
With an apparently malfunctioning radar and a lack of familiarity with
the primary method of navigation, did the pilot seek to confirm the
vessels position with the VTS and/or the accompanying tug?
.
VTS informed the pilot that the ship was off course, which the Pilot
disputed and shortly afterwards a lookout shouted a warning that there
was a bridge support ahead and the vessel went hard right and allided
with the Delta bridge support.
...

Cosco Busan Crew Remain Silent During NTSB Interview [from gCaptain]

...
Built in 2001, the Cosco Busan is among the growing number of bigger,
faster container ships that have "winged tanks" - fuel tanks arrayed
along the sides of the ship.  The IMO convention, adopted in March
2006, requires that by 2010 all new ships with an oil fuel capacity of
600 cubic meters or more must have their fuel tanks deeper inside the
ship and behind two walls. That rule affects most large commercial
ships, and would have affected the Cosco Busan.  Bea said few are
aware of the action taken by the London-based IMO, even within the
shipping industry, because the licensing bodies that put those
regulations into effect have yet to write and distribute information
about it.
...

The above text is from the San Jose Mervury News, which in the 80's and 90's put out the best science section of a news paper that I have ever seen. But I haven't read that paper since the 90's so I can't comment on their current report.

NOAA, Partners Remain Active in Spill Response Natural Resource Damage Assessment Process Underway

...
The overall response operations, according to the U.S. Coast Guard,
include over 1,200 active participants from federal, state and local
agencies. The U.S. Coast Guard reports that approximately 80 different
vessels, including oil response vessels, skimmers, and support ships,
have been active since the spill.
.
NOAA's Integrated Ocean Observing System regional partner, the Central
and Northern California Ocean Observing System through the
state-funded Coastal Ocean Current Monitoring Program, has been
assisting in the spill tracking as well as using High Frequency Radar
systems both within San Francisco Bay and the Gulf of Farallones in an
effort to provide real-time information to the response teams.  The
derived currents are being sent directly to responders as well as
posted on the CeNCOOS Web pages. CeNCOOS continues to work with its
partners, providing environmental information as it is requested by
NOAA HAZMAT, NOAA National Marine Sanctuary Program, State of
California Department of Fish and Game, and California Office of Spill
Prevention and Response.
.
Clean-up progress includes beach areas of Alameda and Contra Costa
counties. Over-flights and assessment have determined that there
remains very little surface water oil product that is recoverable and
a total of 14,974 gallons of the oil have been recovered through
Nov. 14.
...

Attachted to the article shows a view of the incident command facility.

Endangered Right Whales Headed South for Winter Alert for Mariners and Fishers in Southeast U.S. Waters

Each year, pregnant females migrate southward more than 1,000 miles
from feeding areas off Canada and New England to the warm, calm,
coastal waters off South Carolina, Georgia and northeastern Florida to
give birth and nurse their young.  These waters are the only known
calving area for the species.
.
Collisions with ships and entanglement in fixed fishing gear are the
two greatest threats to the recovery of North Atlantic right whales,
which is why it is important that all mariners and fishers are aware
of the following regulations and recommendations:
    * Federal law prohibits approaching or remaining within 500 yards
       of right whales.
    * Gillnet fishing and possession is prohibited annually in the
      Southeast U.S. Restricted Area North, Nov. 15 - April 15, with
      an exemption for transiting through this area if gear is stowed
      in accordance with the rule.
    * Gillnet fishing is prohibited annually in the Southeast
      U.S. Restricted Area South, Dec. 1 - March 31, with limited
      exemptions for gillnet fishing for sharks and Spanish mackerel.
    * Recommended routes are in place for mariners entering or leaving
      the ports of Jacksonville and Fernandina, Fla., and Brunswick,
      Ga.  The routes are expected to reduce the chances of ship
      strikes with whales.
    * Speeds of 10 knots or less are recommended when consistent with
      safe navigation.
    * Always wear polarized sunglasses and stay alert in right whale
      habitat.  Although right whales are large animals, they have
      dark skin, no dorsal fin, and can remain at, or just below the
      water's surface making them extremely difficult to see.
...

Maritec has a news page with a whole bunch of interesting AIS articles. I am biased because, right now, the first item is about my upcoming AGU presentation.

Maritec News: Automatic Identifucation System, AIS, UAIS

My AGU poster: Google Earth Visualizations of the Marine Automatic Identification System (AIS): Monitoring Ship Traffic in National Marine Sanctuaries

Third SAR-Lupe satellite launched successfully into its orbit Automatic Identification System (AIS) for receiving ship signals also on board the COSMOS launcher for OHB

The COSMOS-3M also carried an Automatic Identification System (AIS)
for ships on board. OHB and LuxSpace Sarl, a company owned by OHB
Technology AG, are working on the validation of this and following
systems. OHB is building seven new ORBCOMM satellites in which the AIS
will be implemented for the US Coast Guard for global monitoring of
shipping traffic.

I saw GateHouse at the conference last week, but I never got a chance to talk to them. I did get to spend some time talking to them at AIS06 last year.

COM DEV International and GateHouse A/S of Aalborg, Denmark, have
announced the signing of a strategic alliance agreement to work on
data management systems for COM DEV's space-based AIS (Automatic
Identification System), currently under development.

And there are a more on the Maritec news feed...

Today, Dover had a farmers market over at the McIntosh cooking school. Very nice. The next one is Dec 22nd.

Update 2008-11: Frank Reed pointed me to Glory (optical phenomenon) [wikipedia]

Update: Barry Hunter pointed out that this first image is a Brocken Spectre (also Brocken spectre [Atmospheric Optics])

Here are two more images from recent plane flights that are interesting.

I think this is the same as a sun dog, but if someone knows the correct term for this rainbow halo around the shadown of the plane on the clouds, please let me know.



Here is an image of a lock on a river just to the west of Chicago Midway airport.

Interview: The driver behind NASA's Mars Rovers Scott Maxwell must have one of the best IT jobs in the solar system

We arrange for our work day here on Earth to match the Martian night,
so when the solar-powered Rovers shut down for the Martian night, they
send us pictures and other data showing us where they are now and what
they did the previous day. Then they go to sleep, and we go to work
planning the next Martian day of activities. At the end of our day, we
have a list of commands to send the Rovers when the sun comes back up
in the Martian sky. At that point, they go to work, and we go to
sleep.

Yesterday I presented to the RTCM working group that is focused on AIS binary messages for enhancing how Vessel Traffic Serverices work. I talked about the application of binary messages for getting water level and right whale notices to ships. As a part of that talk, I updated my martime domain awareness (MDA) slide to be a bit more complete. The background image that sets the location is from the USCG.

I just ran into another interesting AIS document: "Guildlines on Annual Testing of the Automatic Identification System (AIS)," IMO MSC.1/Circ.1252 [RTCM PDF], 22-October-2007.

1. The Maritime Safety Committee, at its eighty-third session (3-12
October 2007), approved the Guidelines on annual testing of the
Automatic Identification System (AIS) developed by the Sub-Committee
on Flag State Implementation, as set out in the annex.
2. The purpose of an annual testing is to determine that AIS is
operational as defined in appropriate performance standards not
inferior to those adopted by the Organization*.

From the 3rd page:

1. installation details including antenna layout, initial configuration report, interconnection diagrams, provision of the pilot plug and power supply arrangements;
2. checking the correct programming of the ships static information;
3. the ability of the AIS to receive ships dynamic information from the appropriate sensors;
4. the ability to correctly input the ships voyage related data;
5. a performance test of the equipment including radio frequency measurements; and
6. an on-air test that the unit is working correctly using for example an appropriate Vessel Traffic Service (VTS) station or a suitable test equipment.

And a follow up to this is that Jorge Arroyo talked yesterday about there being a form on the USCG AIS web page for reporting. I need to track that down and keep it handy for when I'm processing data.

Chris Shivery is talking about LRIT. Couple key points:

• Will transmit 4x per day for ships > 300 GT
• Data will be ID, Pos, and time of pos
• Cost is likely $0.25 per position for US
• The US government will pay for all transmission costs for US flagged ships
• The US will get all US flag vessel data plus everthing within 1000nm of US territory
• There is an option to poll ships at up to every 15 minutes for SAR (Search and Rescue)
• The US will pay to develop the international data center
• There will be a USCG Request For Information coming soon.
• Lights on is Dec. 2008

Jorge has a whole mess of rule updates. So many that I had trouble keeping up.

• Class B - The FCC should be publishing their cert process this month
• A new AIS reg should be out Monday. Should be published by OMB in December
• SAR AIS transponder coming. Should be much better than radar SAR transponders
• AIS Repeaters - Still working on the standard
• Still working on ECDIS AIS std
• NAIS Inc 1 is done rolling out
• A new standard for symbology will be out in January
• An LRIT rule has been published

I missed a lot, but that's what I got. Hopefully AIS Class B units will be on sale in Dec.

We just had the keynote from Connaughton. One good quote:

"American officers are cheaper than other sources of officers"

He talked about there being a world wide shortage are maritime officers of about 20,000 people.

eNavigation 2007 starts this morning. All of the morning's speakers are from the USCG. Here are the first talks:

• Moore - Introduction
• Jorge Arroyo - AIS regulatory Update
• Larson - SOLAS ECS Rulemaking
• Shivery - LRIT
• Ingalsbe - NAIS
• Tetreault - Vessel Traffic Management
• Moore - Q & A

Agenda

I have been skeptical of X3D ever since I first heard about it. I felt like VRML was a step backwards from the OpenInventor ASCII file format. X3D has long suffered from poor support and from no one else around me using it. I think now the tide is changing for me. Roland was looking for a new file format for some of his work and he was feeling some of the same frustrations I was having. Things like OBJ just down have the flexibility to allow for us to do research with the format. Inventing our own format has the drawback of working on our own little island. Roland got really excited by X3D and really took off with it. I've been holding back judgement to see how it worked for him. Then came Matt into the mix. I now have two separate people who keep showing me how great X3D is. There is still the issue of complete support for the file format in 3D programs, but these guys have shown me first hand that there is enough critical mass for this format to win out. The final 1-2 punch was:

1. doing some additional work in OpenInventor and getting frustrated with the format not being as uniform as XML
2. Matt gave me a tour of X3D and showed me that it has all the benefits of XML and all the good things that I count on in OpenInventor

Now if only Coin3D would read X3D.

Matt has been doing some really awesome ground work that I have to show off a bit. Back in the day (aka before I got to CCOM), the VisLab created some great demos with billboard images in the Portsmouth Harbor. They took it one step further and tried a running mosaic along the water, but the results caused them to conclude that ribbon mosaics just are not the correct solution. However, Briana's masters thesis demonstrated that billboards do work. The alternative to billboards are CAD models of a harbor objects. When done right (aka by Chris and not by me), critical visual features can be really powerful. But there are two drawbacks two CAD models:

• They take a lot of time (and consequently $$$) to create.
• They miss many of the surrounding textural details that are not directly on the buildings.

After much discussion between Matt, Colin, and myself, Matt went out for a day with Capt. Ben and the labs nice digital camera. He took hundreds of pictures of all the key features along the harbor entrance. The images included sets of photos of the same object but from different directions. He then worked up a prototype in GeoZui of an application that switches which photo is display based on the direction from which the object is viewed. Many objects (.e.g light houses) look very different when viewed from different locations. This first prototype still relies on the old TCL engine in GeoZui, so the idea needs a more modern as TCL has pretty much reached the end of development.

Here is a quick bit of code that Matt sent me from his initial explorations of X3D. The idea is to have either embedded JavaScript and/or Python handle the switching.

First his simple show an image file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE X3D PUBLIC "ISO//Web3D//DTD X3D 3.1//EN" "http://www.web3d.org/specifications/x3d-3.1.dtd">
<X3D profile="Immersive" version="3.1"
  xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" 
  xsd:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="http://www.web3d.org/specifications/x3d-3.1.xsd">
  <Scene>
    <Group>
      <Transform rotation="0 1 0 0" scale="149.35 1 19">
        <Shape>
          <IndexedFaceSet coordIndex="0 1 3 -1 2 3 1 -1">
            <Coordinate DEF="UnitSquare" point="-0.5 0 -0.5 -0.5 0 0.5 0.5 0 0.5 0.5 0 -0.5"/>
            <Normal vector="0 1 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 1 0"/>
            <TextureCoordinate point="0 1 0 0 1 0 1 1"/>
          </IndexedFaceSet>
          <Appearance>
            <ImageTexture url="FortConstitution_429.JPG"/>
          </Appearance>
        </Shape>
        <Shape>
          <Appearance>
            <LineProperties applied="true"
              containerField="lineProperties" linewidthScaleFactor="5"/>
          </Appearance>
          <IndexedLineSet colorPerVertex="false" coordIndex="0 1 2 3 0 -1">
            <Coordinate USE="UnitSquare"/>
            <Color color="0.9 0.7 0.6"/>
          </IndexedLineSet>
        </Shape>
      </Transform>
    </Group>
  </Scene>
</X3D>

Then Matt upped the ante to use a Proto. Based on what he showed me here, it looks pretty good!

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!--Warning:  transitional DOCTYPE in source .x3d file-->
<!DOCTYPE X3D PUBLIC "http://www.web3d.org/specifications/x3d-3.1.dtd" "file:///www.web3d.org/TaskGroups/x3d/translation/x3d-3.1.dtd">
<X3D profile="Immersive" version="3.1"
  xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsd:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="http://www.web3d.org/specifications/x3d-3.1.xsd">
  <Scene>
    <ProtoDeclare name="TextureScreen">
      <ProtoInterface>
        <field accessType="inputOutput" name="scale" type="SFVec3f" value="1 1 1"/>
        <field accessType="inputOutput" name="rotation"
          type="SFRotation" value="0 0 1 0"/>
        <field accessType="inputOutput" name="url" type="MFString"/>
        <field accessType="inputOutput" name="lineColor" type="MFColor" value="0.9 0.7 0.6"/>
      </ProtoInterface>
      <ProtoBody>
        <Transform>
          <IS>
            <connect nodeField="scale" protoField="scale"/>
            <connect nodeField="rotation" protoField="rotation"/>
          </IS>
          <Shape>
            <IndexedFaceSet coordIndex="0 1 3 -1 2 3 1 -1">
              <Coordinate DEF="UnitSquare" point="-0.5 0 -0.5 -0.5 0 0.5 0.5 0 0.5 0.5 0 -0.5"/>
              <Normal vector="0 1 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 1 0"/>
              <TextureCoordinate point="0 1 0 0 1 0 1 1"/>
            </IndexedFaceSet>
            <Appearance>
              <ImageTexture>
                <IS>
                  <connect nodeField="url" protoField="url"/>
                </IS>
              </ImageTexture>
            </Appearance>
          </Shape>
          <Shape>
            <Appearance>
              <LineProperties applied="true"
                containerField="lineProperties" linewidthScaleFactor="5"/>
            </Appearance>
            <IndexedLineSet colorPerVertex="false" coordIndex="0 1 2 3 0 -1">
              <Coordinate USE="UnitSquare"/>
              <Color color="0.9 0.7 0.6">
                <IS>
                  <connect nodeField="color" protoField="lineColor"/>
                </IS>
              </Color>
            </IndexedLineSet>
          </Shape>
        </Transform>
      </ProtoBody>
    </ProtoDeclare>
    <ProtoInstance containerField="children" name="TextureScreen">
      <fieldValue name="scale" value="149.35 1 19"/>
      <fieldValue name="rotation" value="0 0 1 -0.17453"/>
      <fieldValue name="url" value="FortConstitution_429.JPG"/>
      <fieldValue name="lineColor" value="1.0 0.3 0.3"/>
    </ProtoInstance>
    <ProtoInstance containerField="children" name="TextureScreen">
      <fieldValue name="scale" value="116.78 1 17"/>
      <fieldValue name="rotation" value="0 0 1 -0.8726646"/>
      <fieldValue name="url" value="FortConstitution_444.JPG"/>
    </ProtoInstance>
    <ProtoInstance containerField="children" name="TextureScreen">
      <fieldValue name="scale" value="107.45 1 18"/>
      <fieldValue name="rotation" value="0 0 1 -1.4835299"/>
      <fieldValue name="url" value="FortConstitution_446.JPG"/>
    </ProtoInstance>
  </Scene>
</X3D>

So, with a series of images like this:



We are able to get all the images to show:



Once again, all this stuff was done by Matt P. Go Matt!

Google Earth Blog has an article today of the SF Oil Spill: San Francisco Oil Spill in Google Earth. I haven't looked at the KML, but it appears that they are missing a timeline. Drat.



Image Source: Google Earth Blog

Here are a couple more links related to the Cosco Busan:

• Path of the Cosco Busan Hitting the Bay Bridge which I got from Follow the path of the Cosco Busan [gcaptain.com]



• Nautical Word of the Day - Allision [gcaptain.com]



• And an editorial about pilots that is quite scathing. Without know the facts, I have a hard time judging the comments in this. Pilot Loses His Bearings, San Fran a Nation Disaster [marine links editor's blog]

I feel very much out of the loop about this being on the East Coast and not watching news on TV. I haven't even heard about this incident on NPR.

Next week is the eNavigation 2007 conference in Seattle. This is an opportunity for us as a community to work on the related Wikipedia pages. In particular, the AIS Wikipedia page needs work. I started a little bit today by adding a link to the conference and editing the class A section just a bit. You will see my changes under the username "goatbar." (That would be from the Goats Bar in CO) I removed some overly vender specific stuff and corrected some typos in the section on China's shore based system, but that is only a start.

We desperately need a table with web links (or at least states the name) for each of the relevant specification documents. There are quite a few of these documents around. Please log into Wikipedia and make your changes. Let me know if you do make wikipedia changes and to what wikipedia pages and I will link to them.

I'm trying to quickly get comfortable with JavaScript (errr... ECMA script). I figured one way to be able to understand what is going on is to play with the Mozilla command line JavaScript systems. There are two ways to do this. The simplest is with spidermonkey. I'm on a mac for this...

fink install spidermonkey

I now have a command line javascript interpreter available as /sw/bin/js. Time to try it.

% js
js> print ("Hello world")
Hello world

Then I hit Ctrl-D for an end-of-file character and I am back to the command prompt. What if we want to execute JavaScript from a script file? Not a problem. Here is my "helloworld.js" script.

#!/usr/bin/env js
print("Hello");
print(1+2);

Run it:

% chmod +x helloworld.js
% ./helloworld.js
Hello
3

Now on to the 2nd method. This uses rhino, which is a JavaScript system writen in Java. (Taming the Rhino: Making Mozilla's Javascript Command Line a Little Less Brutish). Here is the hello-rhino.js. If someone can tell me how to doe this without hard coding the path to js.jar, please let me know.

#!/usr/bin/env java -jar /sw/share/java/rhino/js.jar
print("Hello");
print (1+2);

Now running this:

fink install rhino
chmod +x hello-rhino.js
./hello-rhino.js
Hello
3

Rob De Almeida chimed in with a 3rd method:

   http://dealmeida.net/talks/3/shell.html
.
A Javascript shell written in Javascript (it's not mine, I copied from 
somewhere else, and it has no dependencies, you can just copy it to your 
machine). The advantage is that you can interact with the browser, eg:
.
   alert('foobar!');

Cosco Busan Unified Oil Spill Update [marinelink]

...
All crewmembers and the Pilot that were onboard the COSCO BUSAN at the
time of the accident were alcohol tested within the required two hour
time limit. The results of the tests were negative. All crewmembers
involved in the navigation of the COSCO BUSAN including the Pilot
provided samples to be drug tested within the first few hours. The
results for the drug samples will not be available until early next
week.
...

This is an image from the USCG of the M/V Cosco Busan after being damaged.



A closeup view of the damage:



The full sized original image

NOAA Responds to San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge Oil Spill

NOAA organizations are on scene in San Francisco aiding in the
response to the estimated 58,000 gallons of intermediate fuel oil
spilled yesterday morning when the container ship M/V Cosco Busan
struck the Oakland Bay Bridge in San Francisco Bay.
.
While the incident occurred at the Bay Bridge, the spill is now
showing impact signs as far away as Muir Beach, which is outside and
north of the Golden Gate Bridge, as well as at Alcatraz and Angel
Islands. The Gulf of Farallones and Monterey Bay National Marine
Sanctuaries lie just outside the entrance to San Francisco Bay and are
areas of particular concern to marine resource managers.
...

For more images, you can do use this search on flickr:

http://flickr.com/search/?q=oil+spill&d=taken-20071106-20071109

Just heard from my sister who said that the things are a mess. According to sfgate, 58000 gallons of bunker fuel oil were spilled. It is frustrating to have this happen to my hometown and be in a state where I am not yet ready to help out with kind of event. It's hard for to look at the pictures that are posted along with article.

Spill closes S.F. beaches; oil washes up on Marin Headlands

...
Some officials say they expect the beach pollution to worsen early
this afternoon as the tide rushes out of the Golden Gate. Along Rodeo
Beach in the Marin Headlands, National Park Service ranger Robert Del
Secco kept visitors away from the beach, which is covered in dark
clumps of oil.
...

I cooked up a quick fink package for the geojson python library: GeoJSON at pypi.

geojson-py.info

Let me know if you use it and how it did. If I get feed back that it works, I will throw it in the fink unstable tree. And no, I have not made it to 10.5 yet. I'm still stuck back in the land of Mac OSX 10.4.

Slashdot had a very interesting article last night. Bill to Require Open Access to Scientific Papers. This would definitely shake things up in the academic world. Would other research areas follow this too if the bill actually passes?

Congress is expected to vote this week on a bill requiring
investigators funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to
publish research papers only in journals that are made freely
available within one year of publication.

Here is a quick screen shot from Google Earth of the allision of the COSCO BUSAN (MMSI=477968900) from yesterday. This should in no way be considered or used as an official anything! It is very hard to tell just from a ship track what happened. This first view is all the ship traffic under the bridge for a 24 hour period including this incident. SF is definitely a busy port.



Pulling out just this ship makes it a bit easier to see.



I hope there were no injuries and that any cleanup that was needed went smoothly.

Ooops! Container Ship Collides with SF Bay Bridge [telstarlogistics]

This news item gave me a shock this morning! Somehow I made it through yesterday without hearing about this event. In USCG official MISLE speak, this was an "allision," not a collision. Hitting a stationary object or vessel is termed an allision, whereas two moving vessels coming into unintentional contact is a collision. (But as always, consult your language lawyer for the legal definition.)

At 8:30 am this morning, the Cosco Busan, an 810-foot container ship,
collided with the base of one of the towers of the San
Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge while the ship was under the control of a
Bar Pilot. The crash created a huge gash in the side of the ship and
triggered an oil leak that created an environmental mess in San
Francisco Bay. The San Francisco Chronicle carries the story:

In preparation for eNavigation, I've released version 0.30 of noaadata-py. I have been looking at the proposed right whale notice with a number of people and have updated it to take 2 slots. There is currently space for 21 bits at the end that I have booked with "Spare2." Notice that in timetoexpireN that a value of 0 now means that a ring is not currently active (aka has no speed restriction). That allows electronic chart systems (ECS) to display the monitored zones that are currently clear without having to keep the regions in their software distributions. Also, we have converted the buoy (stationid) from an AIS string 6 to an 8-bit unsigned integer. This gives the option for 256 buoys in each region.

whalenotice2.html

The changelog:

• Pre eNavigation 2007 release
• xymt2kml now an optparse program that plays nicer
• svn propedit svn:keywords on all the scripts/*.py files for better tracking
• Added IMO messages 13 and 14 for RTCM meeting
• Reworking whalenotice message. Added a whalenotice2.xml that fully fills two slots
• Added basestation messages (msg 4) to the sqlite database
• Added gridding code in scripts: ais_pg*.py
• Added ais_traffic_analysis program

noaadata-py-0.30.tar.bz2

Additionally, I have finally released a draft fink info file for the mac people out there. This is not yet tested in any sort of way.

My dad forwarded these pictures from the San Diego fire. They are amazing. Source: unknown.

From this article, More 3D & G, are they computers? [panbo], I was excited to see that the G series is a Linux box.

From the Raymarine site:

The GPM400 G-Series Processor Module is the core of Raymarine's
premier navigation system. With a super fast processor, high
performance graphics hardware and a built-in high capacity hard drive
the GPM400 is up to 10 times faster than other embedded marine
navigation systems. The GPM400's rugged aluminum housing is shock
resistant and designed with heat dissipating fins for cool, quiet,
trouble-free operation under any conditions.
...

VTS - Working with large vessels by Capt Rodriguez

...
VTS works much like the Air Traffic Control system, and has it's own
set of rules. The Navigation Rules state, "Such ships may discontinue
their watch on VHF channel 16 while in the VTS area." Think of VTS
(shipping lanes) as a highway with a median.  The Captains of
commercial vessels know the Rules, but aren't always sure of what to
expect from smaller boats. Vessels smaller than20 meters are required
to keep out of the way of a vessel in a VTS lane.
...

And gcaptain has a very nice series of VTS photos: VTS Photo Gallery - A look inside maritime vessel traffic services worldwide



(Photo by Kam Chin)

Update: Colleen let me know that Aaron Mockrish created these 3D buildings.

These buildings may have been in Google Earth for a while, but I just noticed them. To whoever did these. Thanks!

It would be great if Portsmouth NH teamed up for this!

Your town in 3D

I have been experiencing many kernel panics and complete lockups lately on my two Mac OSX laptops (one PPC/one Intel). These lockups always seem to be associated with doing something with my Verizon USB wireless modem. I've had three such events in two days. The nice thing is that my Intel mac comes back up in about 30 seconds, but that should not matter. Hopefully, upgrading to 10.5 will make some of this go away. This feels much like when I tried to use Microsoft's Virtual PC. Suddenly I had 10 kernel panics a day all with a nice MS Network driver notice. I removed Virtual PC and have not had a kernel panic on the desktop in a year despite heavy (even abusive) use.

My most recent lockup came from trying to add unh.edu to the search domains. I hit save and that was all she wrote.

I really do like having the Verizon mobile internet service, but it can be frustrating. Between that and spending all day next to a Verizon repeater that was cycling itself every 5-10 minutes yesterday, the service can be less than wonderful sometimes. It has worked for me pretty much everywhere I've been (accept in a moving vehicle) and has saved me lots of stress already. Now if we can just get Verizon to test their drivers a bit better and live up to that "unlimited" service that they advertise I would telling everyone to sign up for it.