GDAL PALSAR Complex Driver

About 1 year ago I wrote the ALOS-PALSAR Driver for RAT in IDL. Since then I have replaced IDL with scientific Python in my kit. The objective is to eventually get RAT functions implemented into a Python Based Radar Toolkit which will attract greater developer and user base.

GDAL has a quite usable Python API and is great for getting Geographic Rasters into code for manipulation. So with some help from Frank Warmerdam and following the minimalistic tutorial I wrote a driver for the PALSAR Complex Level 1.1 products. Level 1.5 products are already supported in GDAL via the generic SAR_CEOS driver. I am planning to add the gcp support to the driver next so that polarimetric processing information can be interpreted in real world coordinates.

Australia Day and JAXA presentation

Happy Australia Day to everyone , well even though it is a bit belated. My neighbour had an ultra noisy party so I could not forget it was Australia day even in my sleep.



I have a chance to go to JAXA to present on the work I did on ALOS-PALSAR calibration. Mostly checking the reflectors were pointed at the satellite and analysing the data in RAT. Here is a sample analysis result and the location where the reflectors were. They are of course not there anymore.

RC-Heli

On an impulse I bought a Venom Night Ranger II heli. Now I can't stop dreaming up ways of toying with it and hooking up a feed to World Wind. I am still getting use to steering it. Quite easy to take off, but a nightmare to fly. Since it is new I am really scared of crashing it.

For a worldwind feed I will need readings from the builtin Gyro and will have to hook up Camera,GPS and some link gear. Getting it all in weight will involve plenty of looking around , but I am sure it is possible. If anyone has experience drop me a comment.

Cases, Races and Moonlight Cinemas

Yesterday was a fun day, the case monkeys are off my back and I am a free man. I also managed to stumble into the Tour Down Under Adelaide Sprint.

Finally I watched the slightly mind bending "Scanner Darkly" in the Moonlight Cinema - Botanical Gardens.

The other thing is that I have managed to get myself an RC - Chopper. Expect live feed hookups to Worldwind soonish.

Farewell at Glenelg and Comets

One of my friends is heading off to Canberra next week for work, sort of relocating for a long time. Since ACT is sort of land locked and all they have for large water body is a large lake he decided to have a farewell at the beach since beaches will be pretty rare in Canberra.

The day went pretty well with lots of running around in the water and on the sand, while facing the wrath of a disgruntled old lady who got hit by our ball.

We finished with dinner on the grass and sighting of Comet McNaught at sunset. All this was topped off with gems about every number being special and 1729 being extra special.

Take care and stay in touch Peter. Sorry about the bad astrophotography with the phone camera.

OssimPlanetQt first time from CVS to mingw-windows

To those not in the know , OssimPlanetQt is yet-another globe viewing application. Written using the cross-platform QT Windowing Kit and OpenSceneGraph , the rendering is done using OpenGL.
The main programming language is C++ and it can use the Worldwind Servers as data source as well as standard WMS's.

I am apparently the first one to compile and run it on Windows using the mingw compiler toolchain and the QT 4.2 kit from Trolltech.

A howto will shortly appear on the ossim wiki. Just to draw a few parallels - Google Earth is also C++/OGL based and uses the QT Windowing system and draws most of its data from Digital Globe.

Flickr Plugin

The last act during my x-mas/new year "break" is a semi-working Flickr Plugin for Worldwind. The GUI is still missing for the user's access code entry and tag/date/camera based searches, but that will be easy since the caching and rendering mechanisms are working. Here is a screenshot, guess which tag I used to search. No looking at the code ( Yes it is hard coded at the moment!).

Eventually the photos will show up as textured rectangles, hopefully someone nice will work out something to make it work with Photosynth which looks bare at times and without context/content. Worldwind can provide a Global Context and Flickr can provide Global Content.

New Year and New Measure Tool

Well I have finally got over the New Years with minimal drinking and dancing on New Years Eve. I did manage to polish off a whole bottle of Bordeaux and dance with a girl while her boy friend glared. I know when not to push my luck too far.

Just getting back into coding Worldwind. The Release candidates are doing fine. I am coding up the MeasureToolNG with Withak utilizing the enhancements in the core rendering API. This tool will also support terrain profiling and area calculations.

I have also got my name down in another open source project. Qgis release is out , and I helped Tim put together an MSYS build environment to build it on Windows.

And of course my new year resolution is to not have any new year resolution and let the universe surprise me.

Engagement Parties in the Park

After a brief conversation at the last meet-up I gathered that one of my friends was getting engaged, she currently lives in Melbourne so I was not sure where the party will be. Anyway I called up to congratulate her and got myself invited to the party.

This led to my first drive all the way to the city with my P-plates. I have been making a complete fool of myself driving on my own. I have called up RAA for the following reasons:

1. I had not driven the car in ages and had a flat battery
2. I had parked the car with the steering twisted and had no clue what a steering lock was.
3. Best of all last night I left the parkers on and drained the battery and remembered in the middle of the night that I had done so. I went to the car , tried to start it and obviously it did not start so in frustration I got out and slammed the door shut with the keys inside.

In spite of all the drama and craziness I made it to the engagement. The photos are proof.

During the Christmas break I have also taught myself Python and used NumPy and Gdal Python bindings to some extent. It is surprisingly easy to use and powerful. I am looking forward to trying some of the object oriented features.

Christmas and Reflections

Over the last couple of years my life has changed quite a bit. I was tempted to use the word "dramatically" but I think "soap operatically" is more fitting. The Christmas and New Year period has seen quite some topsy-turvy. I had a great big mess up in 2004 on boxing day, another one on 2005-2006 New Years Eve. These added salt to my life, taught me how to live and how to die and brought excitement and fears I had not experienced before. I grew up to see the world from a new perspective in these couple of years. Learnt to control my needs and to conquer my fears. 2006 has been quite a good year in terms of personal achievement and community achievement in the various open-source projects I have been privileged to be involved.

This holiday period has so far been quiet and happy, but I never know what surprise hides behind the next corner.

26th of December, a day to remember
The day I nearly died.
The Blue Morpho took flight
And taught me what is death and what is life.
Dont hold the butterfly in a cage
Let it free
Love is like sand, the tighter your grip
The more you let it slip

Merry Christmas to All

After Graduation Party

Yesterday a lot of my friends doing Engineering and some other degree as a double degree graduated. So we had a small after graduation meet-up and it seemed to snowball into a reunion. After a few drinks I started ranting about World Wind and Google Earth and a few people tuned in, well they are all engineers anyway and everyone has an opinion.

A lot of them work in the defense industry and the pros and cons of data availability also popped up. It was fun and interesting. I got free beers after telling my sob story .... It's good to be in trouble. Just need the right friends to back you up.

Yahoo Maps, Nasa Worldwind Java and Lobethal Lights

It has been good the last few days. Worldwind 1.4 is getting massive publicity and views on You-Tube, just need to package it and release it. We also have the green light from Microsoft to package the Virtual Earth plugin in the default release with adequate license notice. This is shaping up to be a really data rich release with preliminary talks with Yahoo about them coming on board as Imagery suppliers, not just satellite but the massive archives they have built up on flickr.
This I guess will sort of add an on foot dimension to Worldwind.

I have also been running some design analysis on the Worldwind Java version under closed developement in NASA. So far the design looks consistent and good. With the addition of scripting support in Java 6. Plugin development for this platform seems like a reality.

On Sunday I had the first chance to have a stroll around Lobethal and look at the iconic Lobethal Christmas lights. I have not done this ever in the 3 years I have been working here. I am obliged to post a photo - of the state of our office during christmas. No wonder my boss hates the lights organizers.

Finally I am Licensed to ... Drive and Smite WW haters

I had my final driving lesson/test today. All went well and I passed with 87% and got my competency certificate. I can finally drive on my own.

As expected there has been mixed reaction to Bull's digg and you-tube posts on Worldwind 1.4 Release. I am glad to be part of a team that people take notice of and bother to lynch or praise.

Check out the videos and digg the posts. I am not linking to them. Find them yourself. That's what Google is good for ... search power and making sense of a random web.

Nah I will link anyway.

Digg
You-Tube

Birthdays and Concerts

Another eventful weekend in Adelaide. It was a friends 24th birthday on Saturday and on the Sunday I ended up at the biannual French festival with a few very good musicians in the picturesque settings of Carrick Hill.

Isaac sure looks happy to be 24. Check out the relaxed stance.

The bands and musicians I got to listen to included Arnaud Dumond, Matmatah and the talented Yann Tiersen. For the first time I heard a guitar being drummed and not only strummed and a drill accompanying the guitar on stage.

After jumping around all afternoon I got really tired and called it quits after a round of baguettes with blue cheese and barbecued sausages.

Safari in Maasai Mara

The trip to Mara leads west from Nairobi through mostly dry scrub land. Going through the spectacular Rift Valley then passing through Narok - a big town suddenly in the middle of the desolate wasteland.

Then onwards through unmarked roads in the Nyika to the Mara Sopa lodge - with its nice semi-circular rooms and largely french clientèles. The view from the room is not much different from theAustralian bush land I am used to seeing. May be a bit drier with more cacti and acacia , no eucalypts. The lodge is on top of a hill, the vistas spread out before it, a children's sized pool caters for the whims of the European tourists unused to the heat. After arriving people rush off in their sarongs to the pool.

The dining room and lunch are an elaborate affair with Sh200 per bottle of water. There seems to be a global tourist exchange rate measured in units of bottled water.

At 4pm we rushed for the game drive. The grazers are in plenty, the black mass of wildebeest are impressive only for so long. In addition there are herds of antelopes, zebras and some elusive eland mingling among them. The carnivores take it easy with plenty of food roaming about. A pride of lions was fast asleep until one of them came up to pose on the hillock. We caught a youngish leopard by surprise and surrounded him with the tourist vans, until he found a gap and made a run for it. The only other member of the big five who made an appearance was a buffalo carcass.

I hardly slept at night in anticipation for an early start the next day. We started buzzing around at about 4am, We were ready after a morning coffee by 6am to hit the safari trail again. Hopefully we shall see the "hunt" mom has been obsessing about. Second trip to the park turned out to be quite eventful. Hordes or is it prides of lionesses made an appearance. One lioness stalked some zebras and was nearly ready to pounce when the multitude of tourists Intervened with cumulative noise. Buffaloes finally appeared in flesh and very much alive, with calves and all.

Made a trip to the fake manyatta near the hotel to buy some Maasai beads and artifacts. The huts are really small and cozy and dark and i guess smelling of animals when the maasai actually live in them. Ended up buying some beads and a bead and lions tooth necklace, which the seller vehemently denied being plastic when I suggested in passing that i will pass it as plastic to get it into Australia through quarantine.

The last game drive was quite fruitful. We sighted elephants mud bathing and giraffes walking about as if they own the world. Two prides of lions were lazing around and showed no interest in massive herds of buffaloes grazing a few feet away.

Asiyekujua hakuthamini

I am finally back in Adelaide from the couple of weeks away in Kenya. It feels good to be back and most of all to have the net again. I did not know how much I had grown accustomed to the connectivity and being in touch with myriads of people.

The title points to a proverb in Kiswahili meaning those that do not know you can't appreciate your worth. I had a small incident on my jet lagged night out which bears this out. Kenya being 7:30 hrs behind time, my body is still awake late into the night. So i went dancing in one of the clubs, "Sugar". I met a girl and we danced salsa for quite a while, since that is the only dance I know sort of well and I dance it or some variation no matter what the music. Anyway afterwards when we were getting some water her lawyer friend came up and refused to believe flat out that I grew up in Kenya and actually dragged her away saying, "Better luck with the next girl."

Right!!!

I rest my case. More Kenyan Safari stories coming up, stay tuned.

Airport Passtime

I caught a cheap and early flight to Melbourne on my way. So I have a long wait. I decided to pass the time by starting on the redesign of the Worldwind Measure tool with the new Vector rendering classes. I have been planning this for some time , but have not gotten around to. Hopefully I will try to get a basic alternative done before I arrive in Nairobi.

I also made a few random sketches of people at the Airport. I am posting a sample here.

Via Virtual Earth via Worldwind

The Casey Chestnut VE Plugin for Worldwind is finally fixed for the new camera jitter code and in SVN under the unstable tree. So what is special about this ?

It looks like Microsoft has got a better deal with its satellite data vendor - GeoEye than Google - Digital Globe and Microsoft lawyers are allowing non-commercial, again strictly non-commercial usage of the plugin in Worldwind to show off Virtual Earth until the wonderful people at Redmond come up with their own virtual world respositioning any of the plethora of bits of code they have lying around, be it Mappoint, be it Flight Sim X. I would really love to see what Microsoft has to offer in the time-space model arena.

Another issue comes to mind along with this, why are the satellite vendors selling enter archives to Google-Yahoo-Microsoft instead of using their distribution network to sell scenes as they have always done? Are they not shooting themselves in the foot lowering the value of their data? I believe that is not the case they are gaining a lot of Market reach they could not gain with traditional sales teams. More people are now aware of the availability and quality of the high resolution satellite data and those who were going to buy a raw scene for a special purpose and scientific analysis in the high end are going to do so anyway at $6000 or so at a pop.

It also appears that GeoEye has been eating its cake and having it too, they have been selling imagery to both Microsoft and Yahoo. Not over the same areas though and sometimes not the same scenes, but Yahoo effectively has better coverage over Nairobi, CapeTown and Jo'Burg with Ikonos - Places I am heading to right now. Someone ask the Yahoo lawyers and make us a plugin.

I am off to my holidays for now. See you all later.

Grass is greener on the other side

"Vacation (n): something you don't realize you needed until a few weeks after you've recovered from it. by that time, it's too late." - I am taking a couple of weeks off going back home to Kenya . I have been really busy getting things organized at work and assasinating bugs in World Wind.

With some time in hand tonight I decided to try out VMWare + Debian 'Etchy". Coming from Gentoo, apt felt so much less configurable but faster considering I dont want to compile anything except the bare necessities on a VM. Strangely grass seems to be always greener on the other side of the fence when running Linux I always have a desparate urge to play games or code Worldwind, and while running pure windows I feel like making Ossim Qt work. Anyway with a VM handy I can indulge my whims. I finally got Ossim Qt compiled on Debian relatively painlessly and started grazing on the other side of the fence.

The new generation of WMS Browser

.NET WMS capabilities parsing being smoothened by Carbon Tools has allowed Worldwind WMS Browser to enter a new generation. WMS's can now be fetched and saved in the Worldwind catalog as any other Worldwind Tile Service layers. Thanks to withak(Erik Newman) for ironing out the last few bugs. Here is a screenshot of the latest incarnation of WMS showing the Demis World Map layers.