Harelane

What am I trying to do?

For a long time I've been trying to find time to build some navigation software for sailing. In fact overall I'd like to get around to writing some hull design software as well but that's way off as yet. There's no commercial angle to this I just fancied doing it - partly to keep my hand in programming but also I thought it might actually grow into a useful project. The first stage I guess is to try and outline what it is I'd like to try and make the software do.

OK... Ultimately I'd like the system to a fully featured navigation system capable of dropping into any boat and providing accurate and timely navigation decisions. So the list below is a first stab at some requirements (in no particular order):

• Capture NMEA data streams
• Log data for historic comparison
• Handle conversion of data between formats e.g.
  • Nautical miles and kilometers
  • Degrees Centigrade and degrees Fahrenheit
• Deliver NMEA update messages to boat instrumentation
• Explore whether the use of an open standard communication protocol would be better for internal communications
• Handle route planning
  • Display charts
  • Upload new charts etc.
  • Allow zooming into charts to click on start and end points
  • maintain database of key features
• Optimize routing based upon:
  • Wind direction and strength
  • Previous performance polar plots
  • Tide
  • Forward weather prediction
• Make prevision for accepting data about position in the absence of external sources (e.g. GPS, Loran etc.)
  • Based upon last know position suggest targets for manual bearing checks
  • Based upon last position suggest celestial bodies for position calculation
  • Provide mechanisms for handling manual data and for feeding these into the navigation plots
• Provide the ability to record performance information including sail plan vs win speed etc.
• Handle emergency situations
  • Man Over Board

Ok that's kind of a first stab but probably is good enough.

So far...

I've started knocking together some code and for anyone who is interested the subversion repository can be found at http://subversion.harelane.com/navigation. If you'd like to contribute please feel free to email me and I'll set-up some other user info. - I still can't work out why the blog will not take comments (which is very frustrating...).

I've decided to develop the system in C# which I'm new to but having played a bit seems very good. I have yet to try it out fully under mono but that is my intended target. I'll try and draw up some thoughts on architecture and post those up in due course.

Lastly

If anyone has had similar problems with Drupal blogs not accepting anonymous comments (and yes I have enabled the access for anonymous comments) please get in touch.

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Time to move on

After a very enjoyable 18 months at Snow Valley I have decided to move to pastures new. I will certainly miss the atmosphere at the company and, whilst I'm hoping I'm wrong, I suspect it will be hard to replace the level of expertise that Snow Valley has amassed in it's development team (the other teams are also very talented - I just will not be having to worry about design, test or project management in my new role).

Navigation

On a different note I've finally started working on producing some code etc. for a navigation system. This is mostly being done for the fun of it so I can learn .net (which I've started playing with and coming from a C background have found to be very easy to pick up). Clearly there was no point in using VB.net especially as C# offers so much more and comes armed with better tools support. What I'm planning to do is make a small set of libraries that can be downloaded and bolted in to other applications as required. I may wee wrap these in web services as I feel that delivery model might well be very effective in a number of environments (though I'm really interested in boats!). More to follow...

Images

I have also been slowly scanning images in from various climbing, sailing etc. trips and I should be able to post those up in due course which I hope should be of interest etc.

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Blogs

I have found myself in an interesting position this week when I found details of my current role and myself completely misrepresented on another blog. Not quite sure why I was singled out from the company I worked for (but that's another story!). There doesn't seem to be any mechanism for redress that's less heavy handed than the courts and nobody wants to go there - I'd be interested in hearing about other people's experience (I know comments don't work - and no I didn't turn them off deliberately so please use the contact form whilst I work out what the heck I did to break them in the first place - thanks).

DIY

After a lot of thought I have decided to spray the doors on the wardrobes which I've never done before but seems (a) the fastest and (b) the best way of getting a good even high quality finish. I've found a few articles on spraying which I've listed below:

• http://www.diy-compressors.com/spraying-basics.htm
• http://www.diydata.com/techniques/painttechniques/paint_surfaces.php
• http://www.greenfingers.com/articledisplay.asp?id=419

I would appreciate any comments from people that have done this kind of stuff before.

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Not being a natural diary keeper I've found the idea of blogging a bit weird frankly. As a result its taken me a long time to start writing another entry in my blog. But having discovered Qumana I'm hoping it's going to be a bit easier...

Technology

Since my first posting I've been playing with loads of bits and pieces. Currently at work I've trying out Geospatial searching using .net. Currently SQL Server 2005 doesn't support Geospatial types (e.g. box, line. circle, polygon etc.) unless you pay a hefty licence fee for a third party add on. As a result I've been using Postgres with the PostGis add on. I have managed to find a .net provider for Postgres from Npgsql which works great and have managed to get quite a good service to handle finding object relationships and distances etc.

I should mention that I'm not normally a Microsoft fan but for the first time ever the search stuff has given me a chance to play with .net and Visual Studio etc. On the .net front I'm quite impressed (though there are several places where you just end up questioning why something has been designed a certain way!). What I'd really like to do now is work out how to get the same applications running on Mono and Apache.

This of course Geospatial searching has allot of similarities with navigational systems and as a result I'm getting quite interested in using a similar approach there. Which I guess needs some explanation as my site hasn't got any details on that yet. Basically the idea is to build an Opensource set of services that form the underlying framework for navigational systems (complying with both NMEA but also seeing if there are open XML standards for communication). After which I'd like to build the user interface section to handle setting up of co-ordinates, mapping etc. If any one else is interested in this then please get in contact here

Otherwise I've been playing around with Del.Ico.Us which I really like and have included my tags on the site here (mostly because I can...). I also had a play with Geni which you can use to create your family tree. Looks like ultimately you'd be able to link up tree's with other people's. What's annoying is that there doesn't seem to be any way of linking it to say Linked in or Plaxo which would be way more useful.

Which leads me onto a general technical rant - I really like Plaxo and I use Linked in - why don't these guy's work out a way to talk to each other and for that matter to other systems that use common data. This is a real pain....

OK rant over. On a different subject - I've been playing with Drupal and I now have pictures up and hopefully over the next few weeks / months I'll put all that stuff online. I will also start putting up some of the projects I've been working on so that people can see the code and download it / use it I guess.

General

That's enough about technology. I currently have a DIY project to build some cupboards which is easy. I built those a while back and if it wasn't for the arrival of small children I might of finished them. Sadly I designed the cupboards with a couple of curved doors to try and improve the overall look and blend them into the room better. Needless to say the flat doors are up and working but the curved ones are taking a little time... Hopefully I'll get some pictures up of the approach I've finally taken and the various trials we've had (my dad's an excellent carpenter - sadly he feels that as I designed something quite so stupid I should build them - but he has at least helped with the approach).

Otherwise the house is still in disarray - all the big things (i.e. plumbing, wiring, insulation, etc.) were done when we moved in but now all the smaller things have to be completed and that's not easy with children (which I find way more fun that doing the house!).

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Well this has taken a long time to get going. Mostly because I've been playing with Drupal modules and fiddling around with the site in general. I guess the main thing I've learnt is how to handle some issues with css between firefox and IE.

So as to avoid anyone else falling in to the same trap it appears that using float in side a span tag doesn't work in side Firefox 1.5 and if you've added an image inside the span then it's hidden. For those interested there's a discussion on the drup img_assist forum about this see: http://drupal.org/node/63703