From the ketch

Having a nice little sail for the week-end, anchored in China Camp for now.
That's also a test to see how we can use this kind of emails during the future trip.

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radio email processed by SailMail
for information see:

http://www.sailmail.com

Dustlets in a JFrame

I've reworked the Dustlet classes by Nick Thompson to integrate the Dustlets in the program. Now, it is running in a modal dialog box. That should fix the refresh problem that was showing up from time to time in the applet version.
Dustlet animation (across all the predictions of the GRIB) is available too. A must!

More patterns

There is now a page where you can get new or updated patterns.
I will keep updating it.
The last one is a 4 layer one, superimposing 500mb charts, current analysis, and 24, 48 and 96 hour predictions.
Also, I'm reworking the setup; it is now creating a group of programs (on Windows...), that makes it easier to use. The Console remains though.

GRIB enhancements

I've re-written a major part of the GRIB renderer, as well as an important chunk of the routing algorithm. Now, planning a passage is way easier.
Now Saildocs have made the GRIB files available through http, there is also a GRIB Request Editor, making your life quite smooth!
Check it out, the soft is still available at the same location.

Available as an Applet

There is a stripped-down version of the soft available as an Applet.
It requires a bit of configuration at the plug-in level, but it renders the charts on top of each others.

Software availability

At least for now, the soft is available from http://donpedro.lediouris.net/software/OlivSoftSetup.exe.
And the user manual - included in the distribution - can be downloaded separately from http://donpedro.lediouris.net/software/UserManual.pdf.

I am now working on an Applet version of this thing, so it can run with just a browser.
Keep posted!

Windy Friday

It has been blowing quite a bit on Friday Jan the 4th 2008 in San Francisco... See the weather map, it was not exactly unpredictable.

Dustlets

Based on the Dustlet concept developed by Nick Thompson, we can now visualize the wind of the GRIB files this way. It is rendered through a Java applet. It's a great tool to see at a glance what the current situation is like.

GoogleMap & wind Improvements

Some improvements have been added to the GRIB visualization in Google Map

Dynamic Patterns

We introduced a while back this concept of pattern. Once you have reshaped all several faxes to fit your needs, you can "replay" the re-shaping step by creating a pattern out of it, so you can apply it again on other similar faxes, stored on your file system. That is pretty convenient, when you use the GetFax utility from SailMail, which stores the downloaded files on your disk.
We have also added some features, allowing you, when you are planning a trip, to download from the UI faxes from the Internet. In that case, you download the fax(es) from the net, save them on your disk, and then apply a pattern on them. Mmmh..., there is room for improvement here!
This is where we've introduced the concept of dynamic pattern, containing the URLs of the faxes to download before applying a pattern on it.
As a result, the picture below is just two clicks away. One to invoke the dynamic pattern, another one to show the result in Google Earth... Google Map behaves the same. Click on it to enlarge.It is made out of three faxes:

1. North Pacific Surface Analysis
2. North Pacific 500mb analysis
3. Central Pacific Streamlines

Notice that this last one has to be rotated 90 degrees clockwise, as it comes from the net on its side. This rotation is now part of the pattern as well.