Anchored in Half Moon Bay

We left Oyster Point this morning, the wind outside the Gate was blowing South West, then West, then South West again, South-South-West, and finally, South (where we're going)!
We made a stop in Half Moon Bay...

On a quitté Oyster Point ce matin, le vent après le Golden Gate soufflait du SW, puis de l'W, et ensuite SW à nouveau, SSW, et pour finir, S (ou on va)!
On a fait un arrêt à Half Moon Bay...

Click this

----------
radio email processed by SailMail
for information see: http://www.sailmail.com

Routing Computation Improvement

Found - and fixed - an important performance bug in the routing computation.
That one appeared when a restriction like "Avoid TWS above XX" or "Avoid TWA below YY" was set.
It now behaves like the computation that has no restriction, which is good!
Update is available at its usual place, or through the automatic update mechanism.
Enjoy!

Repackaged...

I repackaged the install.
The dustlet is now implemented as a user-exit, that minimizes the dependencies.
I also integrated and modified the JGrib code, in order not to have to worry about Log4J, which was not quite mandatory in our case.
The best way to get the new version is to uninstall, and then re-install. This is because of some implied structural changes in the soft.

After that, the auto-update feature will keep working OK.

"What if" routing

Mostly dedicated to cruisers - not good for racing - here is a new feature.Think it like "What if I keep sailing at 50 degrees of the true wind, starboard tack, for 3 days?". Or "What if I keep heading 230 true for 5 days?".
This shows you where you would be! There are some limitations of course, like when you keep sailing head to wind, you wacky weirdo.

User Exit

Rendering of faxes and GRIB data seems to be an endless topic..., the soft this blog is about provides some options, but there is way more to do.

That's why we came up with this user-exit feature, that allows anyone who knows a bit of Java to do whatever he wants, with the faxes - reworked or not (color and transparency) - and the GRIB data. This creates an entry in the popup menu of the chart panel, which you can select to trigger external code. The only restriction is to implement a given Java Interface, and you can access the context of the chart panel. 

Above is an example of such a user-exit, smoothing and animating the GRIB data currently displayed in the chart pane. 500mb charts look a bit like a big slug drooling across the ocean...

We will soon post on the site a repository of such user exits (along with explanations about the way to write yours), the possibilities are endless.

The rendering provided by Processing is gorgious, I still need to look into it, for now I'm struggling with thread issues. They manage their own pool apparently, and I need to somehow sneak in... We'll see. 

The video above is a preview of the animated GRIB slug. It's smaller than the real one, but the picture on top will give you an idea of the actual size.

Introducing GRIB Slicing

We now have the possibility on rendered GRIB file to draw a line. A graph will then show up, representing the values along the line of the different data contained in the GRIB. 

If the mouse is held clicked on the graph, then a red dot is displayed on the map (and on the line of course), showing where the point is geographically. It becomes easy to see where the wind is the strongest, the pressure the highest, the temperature the warmest, the precipitations the heaviest, etc.

This feature is available immediatly.

Where is the Sun?

I've had this in mind for quite a while..., I wanted to mix Google Map and some celestial navigation algorithms to know where the Sun is, and specially to avoid the time when the Sun is right in the direction where I'm driving on the 101, as that makes every car to stop.

Based on Jean Meeus' Astronomical Algorithms, and the great work done by Henning Umland, here is a first drop, available here.

You enter your date (top right panel), and you click on the map.

From the point you've clicked, you should see on the map the direction of the Sun.

New 3D rendering for the GRIBs

We can now have a better 3D rendering for the GRIB data.
The thing is to be able to stack whatever data is available in the GRIB on top of another one, along with the chart.
The check boxes at the bottom of the panel do the job, they're activated when the data they describe are available. Stacking waves and Pressure at Mean Sea Level for example, unsurprisingly shows that the waves are bigger where the pressure is low.
To manipulate this kind of image, just imagine it is in a glass ball. And then rotate it just like if you where using a track ball... The mouse moves the image just like your hand or thumb at the surface of the ball.

Processing

I'm currently in the process of reworking the weather software using the framework provided by Processing.org.
The first components to benefit of such a re-writing will be the GRIB 3D representations. The first tests are very encouraging, and the rest should follow.

Keep posted!

Path for GRIB & Faxes

Minor but useful enhancement to the software. We now have the possibility to give a path - instead of a single directory - for the software to find the GRIB and Faxes. 

It occured to me when I was configuring the new laptop on the ketch, for both Internet and the SSB. The faxes and GRIBs coming from SailMail are not stored on the file system in the same location. 

So now, you can tell the soft to took into morte than one directory when you configure the preferences for GRIBs and Faxes.