Amazon MP3

I just downloaded my first album from the new Amazon MP3 service, and I have to say that I'm impressed. Here's what I've discovered:

1. Most individual MP3 files cost $0.89 (compared to Apple's iTunes $0.99).
2. They have no digital rights management (DRM), so you are free to play the music without limitations.
3. The songs are encoded at 256kbps (compared to Apple iTunes' 128kbps). As an added benefit, I noticed that the files on the album I downloaded were created with LAME 3.97, a superior, free MP3 encoder.

One minor annoyance is the requirement (for entire albums, anyway) to install Amazon's MP3 Downloader software. It's easy to install, fairly straightforward to configure, and integrates seemlessly into iTunes (on my Mac). The downloader saves and organizes the music downloads in its own directory, plus instructs iTunes to add the song to your library as each file is transferred. This creates duplicate downloads, but that could be a benefit for iTunes users since it fragments some albums by placing individual music files in separate directories.

Based upon this single experience, I can say with a fair amount of certainty that I'll use the Amazon MP3 service before Apple's iTunes.

When Will The Moon Be There Again?

While driving this evening sometime between sunset and the end of civil twilight, my two-and-a-half-year-old son noticed a blood-red, rising full moon. Upon seeing it, I immediately felt disappointed for not having my camera with me to photograph it in the midst of this particular farmland scene. I began to wonder when the full moon would be in that position again, which led me to begin thinking about how to solve the problem.

In theory, it seems there should be a fairly straightforward solution. First, determine the apparent azimuth and elevation (which may or may not be that easy; I cheated and used Planetarium, my Palm-based astronomy application) at the time of observation. The solution could then be determined by iteration or by rewriting the position determination equations to accept the azimuth, elevation, and position information. The former seems easiest to implement, but much more resource-intensive. The latter seems exceedingly difficult (at least for me) to implement, but would be preferred because of the ability to perform a direct calculation of the solution. If I have some time, I'll try to solve the problem using both methods.

JPL Ephemerides CD-ROM

A few days ago, I received the JPL Ephemerides CD-ROM I recently purchased from Willmann-Bell. Being a big fan of VSOP87, I hope to implement this theory in C in a short amount of time.

Autumnal Equinox

As of this morning at 09:52:05 UT the sun reached the autumnal equinox -- where it crosses the celestial equator and, in theory, for the second time of the year, the amount of darkness is equal to the amount of daylight. This point also marks the beginning of my favorite time of the year. Welcome fall!

VSOP87 C Application Programming Interface (API)

On and off [albeit more off than on] over the past few years, I've been developing an astronomy C library. The crown jewel (in my opinion) is the VSOP87 portion of it since it solves the equations using the complete theory which is comprised of thousands of terms for each celestial body. A couple of days ago, I decided it was time to blow-off some of the dust and start working on it again. I did so by starting to write some documentation for the entire library using Doxygen, an open-source tool designed for such a task. If you're interested in seeing what I have done so far, point your browser at http://www.garychambers.com/orbital-docs/ and let me know what you think. I'm also trying to determine the license under which I should release the code, so I'd also appreciate any input you might have in that respect.

Little Known Naval History

The U.S.S. Constitution (Old Ironsides) as a combat vessel carried 48,600 gallons of fresh water for her crew of 475 officers and men. This was sufficient to last six months of sustained operations at sea. She carried no evaporators (fresh water distillers).

However, let it be noted that according to her log, "On July 27, 1798, the U.S.S. Constitution sailed from Boston with a full complement of 475 officers and men, 48,600 gallons of fresh water, 7,400 cannon shot, 11,600 pounds of black powder and 79,400 gallons of rum."

Her mission: "To destroy and harass English shipping."

Making Jamaica on 6 October, she took on 826 pounds of flour and 68,300 gallons of rum.

Then she headed for the Azores, arriving there 12 November. She provisioned with 550 pounds of beef and 64,300 gallons of Portuguese wine. On 18 November, she set sail for England.

In the ensuing days she defeated five British men-of-war and captured and scuttled 12 English merchantmen, salvaging only the rum aboard each.

By 26 January, her powder and shot were exhausted. Nevertheless, and though unarmed, she made a night raid up the Firth of Clyde in Scotland. Her landing party captured a whiskey distillery and
transferred 40,000 gallons of single malt Scotch aboard by dawn.

Then she headed home.

The U.S.S. Constitution arrived in Boston on 20 February 1799, with no cannon shot, no food, no powder, NO rum, NO wine, NO whiskey and 38,600 gallons of stagnant water.

GO NAVY! Now these guys knew how to drink!

-- Compliments of Paul Valentine

September 11, 2007

Today is September 11, 2007. Six years has elapsed since the horrific terror attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and I still think about it on a near-daily basis, more often if I happen to look at a digital clock at 9:11. It will be forever seared in my memory how beautiful a day it was until those cowardly members of the religion of "peace" shattered the lives of thousands of innocent people and altered forever (literally and figuratively) the landscape of our great country. May we never forget.

Inaugural Post

Welcome, and thanks for visiting! Please don't let the title fool you -- this weblog is about more than navigation. In fact, there will probably be far less about navigation than I'd like, but enough to merit the title. Enjoy, and please feel free to comment on anything you wish.