A Brief Pause From The Ordinary..., Demographics time--please just humor me Options

[cozmsbrpng]

Hello all,

It's fun to hear what everybody else is like so it's only fair that I keep the treadmill going.

I am 29, and I work in a neurology research lab. My focus is in bioinformatics where I get to investigate the role of genetic variation in human diseases.

<rant> You should know that there is a really great law called HIPAA (hippah) that is keeping your genome safe from the insurance companies. If you ever hear about a bill that proposes to weaken existing HIPAA protections please fight to defeat it! </rant>

Space rocks! Pictures of rocks fill up a lot of space on my hard drive. I started building mosaics and mosaic anaglyphs from the raw MER data and quickly got hooked. I feel fortunate to be among talented folks with similar interests, and I hope to learn a lot from the community.

[Rxke]

Wow, this board truly is a place of talents!

I'm 35, and currently a student. Hopefully this will be my last (Thesis) year to become conservator/restorator of visual media.
In normal people speak: restoring old photographs, films and more and more : disaster prevention re: digital archiving, sigh. Stuff that's 100years old is ofthen in far better condition than stuff from the 70's either analog or digital. We're losing a tremendous amount of valuable information, that's only 20-30 years old...

Going back to full time studies is hard, when you did hard unskilled and temp work for more than ten years, I can assure you, but it's thrilling too. I do *not* regret it!

Oh, I'm from Belgium, and can't remember the days when i was *not* interested in the stuff outside our atmosphere, especially Mars, which I somehow consider as my lost homeplanet (yea, I'm weird...)

My best birthdaypresent was the landing of Spirit, friends that came visiting me were a bit frustrated I didn't spend any time with them, but was very close friends with my computer, occasionally jumping around like a lunatic, heehee!

[helvick]

Time to add a bit of a profile for myself I think.

I'm 39, work for a large American semiconductor manufacturer as an IT systems architect specialising in handheld devices. that means that I get to play with lots of gadgets but spend most of my time wishing I worked with stuff that used _real_ operating systems. It also means that I spend far more time than is healthy talking to people about "power budgets" and optimisation strategies for power consumption vs processing capability which might go some way to explaining my fixation with the solar panel's on Spirit and Opportunity.

I've been a space nut since my folks allowed me to stay up watching some Apollo 17 coverage late one night when I was 6, it's one of my earliest memories.

I'm an unapologetic engineer rather than a pure science or imaging buff - I love working over the numbers that trickle down to us to see how the real rocket scientists make all this stuff happen and what the explanations are.

And right now I'm about to take a well deserved break from work to spend two weeks relaxing in Malta, getting some sun (something rarely seen in Ireland) and enjoying something completely different. The timing is a bit bad what with all the excitement on Husband Hill but with a bit of luck all of the imaging gurus will have some amazing stuff for me on my return.

[Bob Shaw]

We're losing a tremendous amount of valuable information, that's only 20-30 years old...

You're right...

...but wrong.

And here I speak from personal experience. The psychology of photography has changed with the advent of Photoshop (etc). Firstly, the veracity of 'real' images has become important in a way that was always previously cryptic. Secondly, access to data is now far more free - especially with the trend (long may it continue) towards full datasets being available rather than (sparse) selections. Thirdly, in the past we archived badly, but now we acknowledge that it is almost a duty, so in future the actualite may be more-or-less preserved. In the past, prints were rubbish and negatives were a nuisance.

I recently (as an example) scanned slides I took at the STS-1 launch, and was horrified by their degradation. They are now digitally *fixed* and *do* represent that moment in time in a way that analog media simply can't. As a second example, I got married in 1980. The clown that took the wedding photos skimped on the bleach/wash and the pictures are now degraded beyond belief (and he never provided the negatives). Had those images been digital, then something could have been done with them centuries from now...

Hardware may go out of fashion, but there will always be either new technology or old enthusiasts who can read elderly media; if pressed, I could read Vic-20 tapes or C64 disks, RLL or MFM HDUs, Apple II data, and so on. And any serious data-archiving agency could do much more!

In fact, we're now at the start of the Golden Age of data, where everything will be available so long as our civilisation persists!

If you want *before* and *after* conservation images, let me know!

[Rob Pinnegar]

When I was about four years old, I read the "How and Why Wonder Book" of astronomy, and decided that studying the planets was the life for me. So, to make a long story short, I ended up doing a bachelor's in astronomy and eventually a doctorate in geophysics. Most of my research has been in signal and image processing. I'm 35 now. Currently, like so many of the people on these boards, I'm working for a software development company -- but as a researcher, not a programmer, which keeps things interesting.

The closest I've managed to get to planetary research was about two and a half years ago, when I was still at U of Western Ontario, and almost ended up doing some work with Phil Stooke. Funding considerations got in the way as they always seem to, which was, in technical terms, a damned shame. I'm not done trying yet though -- 'one of these days. (Anyone got any Cassini images they want deconvolved cheap? For an extra ten bucks I'll do a no-frills wavelet analysis.)

In the meantime, I'm enjoying my current job, which has the plus of allowing me to sneak in the odd publication from time to time. So it's OK, really.

[Tesheiner]

This thread was inactive for more then one year and a *lot* of people registered in the meantime.
Let's give this thread a little bump.

[ustrax]

This thread was inactive for more then one year and a *lot* of people registered in the meantime.
Let's give this thread a little bump.

Hey! I remember this thread...But never introduce myself...

I'm 32, I was born in Lisbon but currently living at the "Glorious Eden" as Byron once called it.
I'm creative director on an advertising agency.
Space has always been an interest since childhood but more on a dreaming fashion than on a technical one.
Above all I consider myself a pilgrim. And space is the way...
Ultreya!

[angel1801]

I am 36 and live in Adelaide, Australia. I'm on a DSP [2] pension and my interest is space stuff is solely from watching just one episode of Cosmos (Episode 13) on our national TV broadcaster (The ABC) on
August 25, 1982. I got to see the other 12 on a DVD box set in 2004.

I also liked reading about dinosaurs and asteroids when I was in primary school. [1] When I realised the two are connected, it formed 50% of my username. The other 50% is supressed here (for very good reasons!)

[1] In Australia, primary school is from the 1st grade to the 7th grade. High school is the 8th grade to the 12th grade.

[2] DSP = Disibility Support Pension (since November 1995)

And this in my 100th post here too.

[tasp]

Retired aerospace worker bee.

Now I 'dabble'.

[ngunn]

Let's give this thread a little bump.

Good idea. I'm definitely one of the oldies at 54. I remember the excitement in our family when Jodrell Bank picked up the signal from Sputnik 1. As a boy I was thrilled by the first blurry pictures of the lunar far side and by that classic Lunar Orbiter panorama of Copernicus Crater. Apollo unfolded during my time as an undergraduate. I missed a lecture (just one) to watch live TV from the Moon. Revelations from the outer solar system punctuated my later student years (research in palaeomagnetism).

Currently I teach maths, physics and astronomy in a further education college. Before that: oil exploration consultant (marine seimic surveys), postman, amateur landscape painter (including astronomical subjects).

[ngunn]

Off topic I know but there used to be a thread where we could post where we lived on a map, but I can't find it now. I'd like to see that, or something like it, revived also. I've often wondered if any other members live anywhere near my North Wales hideout.

[Stu]

Off topic I know but there used to be a thread where we could post where we lived on a map, but I can't find it now. I'd like to see that, or something like it, revived also. I've often wondered if any other members live anywhere near my North Wales hideout.

Not exactly... bit further up the road from you, I'm in Kendal, southern Lake District. Used to holiday in Betws-y-Coed tho... :-)

[ngunn]

Not exactly... bit further up the road from you, I'm in Kendal, southern Lake District. Used to holiday in Betws-y-Coed tho... :-)

It would be nice to meet up if you're passing again sometime. (That goes for any member sampling the delights of Snowdonia.)

[Dyche Mullins]

I am mostly a lurker (I think I have posted a total of 3 times) but I read the forum obsessively. I love getting all the expert opinions and analysis to go with the raw data from NASA, JPL, ESA et al. I am 42 and I was in kindergarten during the early days of Apollo. I became obsessed with space exploration and hardware the way some kids today are obsessed with dinosaurs. I could fashion a lunar lander out of almost any collection of castoff objects and I could name more of the working parts on a Saturn V than I can now name on my Nissan pickup truck.

I live in the US. I grew up in a rural part of Eastern Kentucky (in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains) but I now live in San Francisco. I am a professor of Cell Biology at the University of Calfornia and I study how cells establish and control their internal architecture. But don't worry. I am not particularly interested in "Astrobiology".

[Tesheiner]

Off topic I know but there used to be a thread where we could post where we lived on a map, but I can't find it now. I'd like to see that, or something like it, revived also. I've often wondered if any other members live anywhere near my North Wales hideout.

Oh yes, it's here: http://www.frappr.com/unmannedspaceflight