We’re on our way back from Africa, the birth place of life. Our work is done and so we have thirteen days of travel to look forward too.
During my off time, I’ve gotten into programming and making my own applications using visual basic express. Visual Basic is a programming language which is used amongst other things to write windows based application. The express package is free and put out by Microsoft to anyone willing to jump into windows programming. I have been dabbling in it, and so far have written my own color changing calculator from the bottom up. It’s pretty simple, it adds, subtracts, multiplies, and divides. Bill has been very helpful and encouraging me along the way.
There hasn't been much work to do, except for the occasional launch of a solo float into the ocean. The solo floats, as the name implies, floats in the ocean and records data. The device can record salinity, temperature, and obtain its GPS location and send the data back via satellite. It’s a really cool looking device. It can dive and surface on its own. It uses a ballast tank that enables it to sink and collect data along the entire water column.
The people over at woods whole have given us six of these floats. Throughout trip we have had to drop these off along the way. Deployment is supposed to be a real simple thing, and it usually is. We ask to slow the ship down, drop the solo over the back deck, and say good-bye to it. Finito, it only takes a few minutes
No comments:
Post a Comment