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mhoward
QUOTE (ElkGroveDan @ Apr 25 2008, 08:01 AM) *
I;m also going to have to sell the idea to my wife who just sprang for a Mac Air for me to use in my travels. Wasn't technology supposed to make our lives simpler? How is this any different from the previous generation where Dad had to make an argument for why he needed one of those new fancy 13" color TVs in the garage.


Well there's some hope. Since the iPhone SDK is related to the Mac one, I might also do a version that will work on your Mac Air. I've got one myself and like it a lot - but I wouldn't want to store 20+GB of data on it, either.

But I suppose I should really figure out how iPhone programming works before I get too far ahead of myself.
djellison
I think the iPhone and iPT make perfect MI image scale viewers smile.gif

Doug
mhoward
Wow, thats retro, Lyford. Has BoingBoing featured you yet? smile.gif

Someday the iPhone will be our old Atari.
alan
Any chance there will be a midnight phoenix browser?
mhoward
QUOTE (alan @ May 6 2008, 12:43 PM) *
Any chance there will be a midnight phoenix browser?


We'll see. I don't have any information about how or when they'll be releasing images. I'll be eagerly monitoring developments, though - same as you all, I presume smile.gif
mhoward
Since Stu mentioned the Phoenix Twitter page on the Phoenix thread (thanks Stu), it gave me an excuse to sign up for Twitter and see what that's all about. So as an experiment I started a Twitter page of my own.
mhoward
I've updated MMB 2.0 to add a basic utility for downloading Phoenix images. Two new menu options are under the Update menu: "Fast Update Phoenix Images" and "Full Update Phoenix Images". Both options are similar, they download images from http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/images/gallery/. As the name suggests, "Fast Update" is faster and I suggest you use that one most of the time. When you run them, the output in the Update Console explains what happens.

This is just to help with downloading files; there is no support for Phoenix Slideshows or Panorama views as there is with MER. This is because the two missions are really very different and it would be more work than I have time for to expand MMB 2.0 to accommodate Phoenix. Phoenix really requires a special program of it's own. I might try making one sometime (it's really really tempting), but don't be surprised if it's only for Mac this time, or if it never happens at all.

The JPGs are stored under {mmbworkspace}/Phoenix/jpg and the files are not renamed, ie the filenames are still lg_xxx.jpg. However, newly downloaded images are copied to a folder under {mmbworkspace}/Phoenix/inbox/{timestamp}, so you can see what images have just downloaded using Windows Explorer or the Mac OS Finder. You can open the jpgs in a text editor and view any metadata information that's there, including the product id/proper filename.

I'm having trouble uploading the program to Google Code, so right now the only way you can get this is to use the Help->Update Software feature in MMB 2.0. Those who've done this already know the drill; you need to be a bit patient as the software update downloads without a progress dialog.

Keep in mind this is experimental and largely for my own amusement, yadda yadda. The Phoenix team has done a phenomenal job so far making these images available (thank you)... but I'm still not enjoying the web interface. Perhaps that's just the nature of web interfaces.
imipak
QUOTE (mhoward @ May 30 2008, 07:00 AM) *
... I'm still not enjoying the web interface. Perhaps that's just the nature of web interfaces.


It's the nature of Flash, IMO. (snip! mutterings about plain ol' HTML, back in the day, magnets on the inodes, uphill - both ways, etc. ) The way the caption pops-up over the image drives me nuts.
djellison
I use the nasa.gov/phoenix site at the moment - the Arizona one is good, but the flash thing annoys me more than just a bit as well - and because they lack the full filenames, they're hard to interpret.

Doug
mhoward
I wanted to download from the nasa.gov/phoenix site. However, the jpgs there do not have the embedded metadata. For me, one of the coolest things that the Phoenix team has done is to imbed that metadata in the images. I also thought maybe the Arizona site gets updated more quickly - it seems to be updated almost instantaneously. But I can probably add an option to download from the nasa.gov/phoenix site as well, if anybody wants it. I just did what I could get done in a couple hours.

Edit: And I'm still thinking about renaming the images with the product id. It's just a little tricky, I'll need to keep track of how the lg_xxx filenames map to the product IDs.
mhoward
Okay, I finally got the packages uploaded to Google Code.
mhoward
A new version is available through Software Update or on the Google Code page:

I fixed a bug that was preventing the program from downloading the latest Phoenix images, so this version is required for anyone who's using that functionality.

Since so many people requested renaming the images to match the image product id, the images are now copied to a "renamed" directory where they are so renamed. Unfortunately I have to keep the lg_xxx.jpg images where they are in the jpg directory, as the downloader uses them for comparison to see what needs to be updated. The images are also renamed when they are copied to the inbox folder now.

Finally, for Emily, a metadata.csv file is written to the {mmbdir}/Phoenix directory at the end of every Phoenix image update. This contains the metadata extracted from the jpgs, in csv form.

I haven't had much time to test this, so let me know what's wrong with it (or what you'd like different, within reason).
elakdawalla
All hail Saint Michael, patron of raw image data! smile.gif

I've updated MMB and the download is now running; so far so good. I seem to be getting veeerrrrryyyy slllooooowww download speeds on the larger autopan images, but that's not MMB's fault. If you build out the Phoenix functionality further, a feature request would be to have the option to toggle on or off the inclusion of autopan images in the update. But honestly I don't think that'll be such a big deal once I have run the first update completely.

Rubbing my hands in anticipation...barely able to suppress maniacal snickers....muhaha....

--Emily
mhoward
"Fast Update" skips files over 500K for exactly that reason. But yeah, it could certainly be improved. Let me know how the metadata dump works out...
elakdawalla
Actually things are going much faster now -- there don't seem to be as many autopans after sol 3. I'm now up to sol 7, so almost there.

--Emily
elakdawalla
CSV metadata output is great, Mike. I'm husbandless tonight so I will work on my browse pages this evening and hopefully have them ready for people tomorrow.

Thanks again for the greatness that is MMB.

--Emily
mhoward
Okay, just one last update, and then I'm done for awhile.

Just for the thrill of it, the latest version shows Phoenix images in the Update Viewer window as they download. And back in the MER panorama visualizer, I fixed the way that mousing-over hotspots makes the rover model appear, since it was bugging me.

That's it for awhile - possibly a long while. My next project is a game and has nothing (well, very little) to do with space; and it's running slightly behind schedule, so I need to get to work.

(Note to the moderator team: Yes, I know... seriously, this is the last one. rolleyes.gif )
djellison
For those that wanted to have a look at the MMB movies that MH made perviously that were on his dot.mac webspace ( but got taken down due to bandwidth issues ) - we've got bandwidth to spare...so they're re-posted here : http://mmb.unmannedspaceflight.com/


Doug
alan
When MMB scans the folder for Phoenix metadata it appears to be scanning the entire folder, currently 7000+ images and increasing rapidly. Is there a way of avoiding scanning the entire folder or if not a way to shut that feature off.
mhoward
QUOTE (alan @ Jun 22 2008, 07:19 PM) *
Is there a way of avoiding scanning the entire folder or if not a way to shut that feature off.


The easiest thing will be to add a separate "generate Phoenix metadata" menu option and not do that as part of the update. I'll do that when I have a chance.
elakdawalla
Hi Mike, the image renaming function of MMB's Phoenix image downloading thingy seems to be broken. Could it be a 10k image bug? It seemed to quit working right around the time that the images ticked over to filenames like "lg_10nnn.jpg"

EDIT: It's not broken for all, just some. And the JPEG headers on the ones that fail to be renamed seem to indicate that they are OM images, even though they're not, they're RAC and SSI images. Maybe the problem is on the LPL end...

--Emily
mhoward
As far as I remember at the moment, I'm just taking the filename right out of the metadata. But I'll take a look later if I have time.
elakdawalla
I got a reply from someone at LPL today saying yes, there was a bug in their pipeline, and that they had fixed it. Things seem to be working properly now. So don't sweat it, Mike!

They are having to repost all the images with the repaired headers; they seem to start around lg_11333.jpg, so those of you who view the images on the Phoenix website will see a lot of repeats starting on sol 43.

--Emily
mhoward
Good, I'm glad it's not my problem. I can safely ignore other people's software problems smile.gif

Okay, and here's a special message for MMB fans who may also have an iPhone or an iPod Touch: Go buy my game. Is this UMSF-related? Well it might be; if I can actually sell some of these, I might be able to do other things that are space-related. Oh and visit the website. Thank you.
hendric
Well, I'm not an iPhone user, so I'll just donate some money your way. Now I expect you to listen to all of my demands and get to work on them immediately!!11

Oh wait, I don't have any demands. smile.gif

Hmmm...Actually, how about a truly 3D mahjongg, using cubical tiles. Imagine trying to remember what's going on with 6 different sides! smile.gif
mhoward
QUOTE (hendric @ Jul 11 2008, 01:44 PM) *
Hmmm...Actually, how about a truly 3D mahjongg, using cubical tiles. Imagine trying to remember what's going on with 6 different sides! smile.gif


You mean a different tile art on each side? Wow! What a concept! laugh.gif
elakdawalla
OM images are starting to come down the pipeline on the Phoenix website, but it doesn't look like MMB is renaming them -- does anyone else get the same behavior?

--Emily
slinted
The issue may be malformed tags in the headers. The OM images that started showing up on the raw site have duplicate quotes:
CODE
PRODUCT_ID =""OS057EFF901264061_164E0MBM1"
"
FRAME_ID = ""MONO"
"
FRAME_TYPE = "MONO
"

CosmicRocker
I'm not seeing them in my "renamed" directory, either. I first noticed something was odd last night when I looked at the .csv file for metadata for the OMs of sol 58. The file has only 23 OM metadata records, 22 from sol 4 and 1 from sol 51. Good catch, slinted. I'm no programmer, but I can imagine how that extra quote could mess things up.
jamescanvin
Hi Mike,

Just been setting up my shiny new iMac. smile.gif

And of course the first thing (no joke) I did was try and install MMB. However I can't seem to get the intel OSX binary to download properly. I've since tried it on another machine and still get the same problem.

James
mhoward
Hmmm. I tried downloading it here and it worked fine. Maybe having a problem with the download terminating early? Could it be an internet issue?
jamescanvin
I guess so, it was downloading very slowly and although I tried it on multiple machines it was on the same internet connection, seems to work fine from work this morning (and lyford was kind enough to mirror a copy, thanks). I'll now email it to myself at home just to be sure. smile.gif

James
briv1016
The images off of Exploratorium haven’t been loading for a while now. I went to the website and the images are there. Is this a coding problem with Exploratorium or MMB.

Or is it just my computer.
jamescanvin
Not working for me either. On both Windows and Mac version.
mhoward
You're right - it's not working. It's somewhat surprising to me at this stage of the game, but it looks like Exploratorium has made minor changes to their HTML code, and MMB is no longer parsing it correctly.

I'll fix this for version 2.0, probably today. But I'm afraid this spells the death of MMB 1.x. I don't remember how to build 1.x anymore, and don't have time to reverse-engineer the process.
mhoward
A 2.0.1 update is now available through the update software feature. This fixes the new incompatibility with Exploratorium.

Please note that Exploratorium apparently re-posted most of Opportunity's microscopic images on 8/26/2008. To avoid downloading all those images, go to Update->Advanced Update Images..., choose Update Images from "Exploratorium", put in 08/27/2008 for the start date, then click ok to update. After that update completes, things should work fine.

I've updated Google Code with the binaries as well, but I've run out of space there, so only the Windows version and the Mac on Intel versions are posted; Mac on PowerPC is not. I'll have to either get more space there or (more likely) just start putting the files somewhere else. I don't think many people use the Mac on PowerPC version.

I hope we're good to go now, since Oppy is off to see new sites...
elakdawalla
Mike, Doug: How did this problem relate to the problem of Exploratorium being down? I made a couple of inquiries about that -- should I send emails saying the problem has been resolved?

--Emily
mhoward
QUOTE (elakdawalla @ Aug 30 2008, 09:12 AM) *
Mike, Doug: How did this problem relate to the problem of Exploratorium being down? I made a couple of inquiries about that -- should I send emails saying the problem has been resolved?


I'm not sure what happened. Technically speaking, the problem for MMB is that suddenly the "HREF" tags in their HTML code are now lowercase instead of uppercase. They've been uppercase for the lifetime of the project, and I don't know why it would change now - but still, ultimately it's not a problem with their web pages, it's just a problem for MMB. MMB 2.0.1 can handle it, so people will just have to update, and I'd say the problem is basically resolved, as far as I know.
djellison
There was an upgrade, I think, from 10.2 to 10.5 on the server. Not sure if/how they might impact it - but stuff has been changed - it wasn't just 'down' and then 'up' again.
djellison
Just done an MMB update - I think Mike's got it sorted.

(There are 2728 new Opportunity images at Exploratorium.)

I know how horrible and time-consuming it is to revisit an old IT project that you thought you'd left behind - so kudos to Mike for doing so.
mhoward
I heard from Exploratorium, and understand what happened now. You're right, Doug, the change was due to the update from 10.2 to 10.5. We should be good to go now, but people will need to update to MMB version 2.0.1.

Exploratorium is awesome. It's so great that they care enough to keep providing this service after all this time.
OWW
I get this error in the new MMB:

QUOTE
Reading http://nasa.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportu...m/2008-08-26/... scanning...
java.text.ParseException: Unparseable date: " 26-Aug-2008 17:"
at java.text.DateFormat.parse(Unknown Source)
at midnightmarsbrowser.application.UpdateTask.updateLocalRawFromExpScanFilenames(Up
dateTask.java:981)
at midnightmarsbrowser.application.UpdateTask.updateLocalRawImagesFromExploratorium
CameraCode(UpdateTask.java:921)
at midnightmarsbrowser.application.UpdateTask.updateLocalRawImagesFromExploratorium
(UpdateTask.java:868)
at midnightmarsbrowser.application.UpdateTask.doUpdate(UpdateTask.java:853)
at midnightmarsbrowser.application.UpdateTask.run(UpdateTask.java:303)
at java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source)
mhoward
QUOTE (OWW @ Aug 30 2008, 04:46 PM) *
I get this error in the new MMB:


Yep, I'm seeing that now. They warned me there might be more changes, but I didn't believe them. Looks like it's time for version 2.0.2...

mhoward
MMB version 2.0.2 is now posted. Another fix to handle the Exploratorium system software update. I'll keep doing this as long as it takes, I'm just so happy to see Oppy back out on the plains.

By the way, I'm told the duplicate micro images from earlier have been removed now, so that shouldn't be a problem.
mhoward
Final note for tonight... I've updated the metadata, the first time in a while. I'll try to keep it more up to date going forward, since Opportunity's New Voyage is bound to be exciting (although I'm not expecting it to be fast-paced).

Some of the exit images are pretty cool, albeit sparse at this point.
mhoward
A very nice mention of Midnight Mars Browser on The Planetary Society Blog. Thank you, Emily!

This new voyage is certainly exciting. Who would have thought, after all these years, Opportunity would be taking on something new? I fervently hope she keeps going for years to come.
Tesheiner
Simple question: How can I configure MMB 2.0 to use a proxy?
mhoward
In theory, you should be able to follow the directions here except instead of adding memory parameters, add the following lines:

-Dhttp.proxyHost=your proxy host
-Dhttp.proxyPort=your proxy port

If you could try it out and let me know if it works, that would be great.
Tesheiner
Now I get this:

CODE
Beginning image update Mon Oct 06 17:48:36 CEST 2008
Checking for http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all/opportunity_n1600_text.html
java.io.IOException: Server returned HTTP response code: 407 for URL: http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all/opportunity_n1600_text.html; retrying...
java.io.IOException: Server returned HTTP response code: 407 for URL: http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all/opportunity_n1600_text.html; retrying...
java.io.IOException: Server returned HTTP response code: 407 for URL: http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all/opportunity_n1600_text.html; retrying...
Tried 4 times; terminating.
java.io.IOException: Server returned HTTP response code: 407 for URL: http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all/opportunity_n1600_text.html
    at sun.net.www.protocol.http.HttpURLConnection.getInputStream(Unknown Source)
    at java.net.URL.openStream(Unknown Source)
    at midnightmarsbrowser.application.UpdateTask.readTextFileFromURL(UpdateTask.java:1960)
    at midnightmarsbrowser.application.UpdateTask.updateRawImagesFromJPLCameraCode(UpdateTask.java:1152)
    at midnightmarsbrowser.application.UpdateTask.updateRawImagesFromJPL(UpdateTask.java:1126)
    at midnightmarsbrowser.application.UpdateTask.doUpdate(UpdateTask.java:847)
    at midnightmarsbrowser.application.UpdateTask.run(UpdateTask.java:303)
    at java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source)

Done.


Edited: Code 407 is related to authentication, which actually I have to do when navigating via this proxy.
mhoward
QUOTE
407 Proxy Authentication Required


So it's sort of working. Now add:

-Dhttp.proxyUser=your proxy user
-Dhttp.proxyPassword=your proxy password

... and cross your fingers, plus make a small offering to the local IT deities.
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