Uninstalling Xubuntu from Ubuntu 12.04

I have been trying to learn to love Ubuntu 12.04 since my previous upgrade experience. It has been no easy task.

Among other things, my PC is not cutting edge, but even running Firefox was beginning to slow down to a crawl. I have not yet determined if this was due to some specific software or driver error, the Gnome 3/Unity interface, or other background tasks fault.

Getting desperate I have been looking around for lighter weight alternatives. I tried installing Xubuntu, which is supposed to be much more bare bones than the flashy Unity desktop.

I installed it
sudo apt-get install xubuntu-desktop

That was all fine and good. I restarted and went into the Xubuntu desktop. First of all, what I didn't realize, and my mistake for being ignorant, it kind of adds a lot of other software into your system, changes the boot screen, and generally is a bit more invasive that I liked. In the end, it was performing better, but due to some persistent graphics issues I have been having with Ubuntu I couldn't see the whole desktop after logging in. From what I could see of the desktop it looks a lot like the Linux experience I had in the mid-2000's on Red Hat or SuSE distros, pretty bare-bones, almost Windows 95-ish. Not saying it's awful, but I almost have to say I like Windows 7 more now. At least it was fast!

So, how to uninstall?

Well it's more difficult than it might seem. I have followed these excellently well-documented steps

Ubuntu 12.04 – How to Completely Uninstall/Remove a Package/Software/Program

The one comment I had, (which I could not post, apparently my email or website flags me as a spammer) is that GEdit 3 which come with Ubuntu 12.04 does not have the Regular Expression find and replace capabilities shown in those steps. You must additionally go and install a Gedit regex replace plugin to do so.

For now, I am using the Unity 2d interface. It looks almost the same for me, feels pretty quick. I'll stick with it. Not saying I would rule out a switch to Xubuntu or another desktop in the future if unity continues to be trouble.

Things you shouldn't do: or how I upgraded to Ubuntu 12.04: Precise Pangolin

A Pangolin

So I just moved to a new house, and now that I actually have room for my stuff, I dusted off my old Ubuntu desktop for the fun of it and set it up on a desk in my new basement. It has been several months since I used it, so after booting I get prompted by Ubuntu's Update Manager program to install a million updates for things that I probably never used. Fine, maybe there are some security fixes or something. I click "Install Updates" and away, we go. Not too long later, I get some errors about the Bootloader being out of disk space. That sounds troubling. So I Googled for a while and found some advice about cleaning up old packages, and I did all that, removed a bunch of games and other programs I didn't need. That seemed to solve things. I ran update manager again, and finished the install. Everything seemed great.

There was just one more problem. Update Manager had a little tiny message above the normal dialog to select packages. It said something like "Upgrade to Ubuntu 12.04 LTS". So my desktop was on 10.04. I had actually recently tried out the new version of Ubuntu on a VM using their prepackaged all-in-one Windows installer "Wubi". I didn't like it, and found the performance was horrible on my Windows 7 laptop. Opening a folder a document would take 30 seconds and literally lock me out of doing anything else. I wasn't crazy about the new "Unity" style OS face lift they now package. But regardless of that experience, I am now a well trained animal, and when my computer's operating system tells me I should upgrade, and they make it so easy to accept it, newer is always better, always more security issues resolved, defects fixed, I mean why wouldn't I want to upgrade? So I couldn't help myself after a couple of days I went back and started the upgrade process.

It ran all night long. Not necessarily because it took that long, but because every so often in the upgrade process it would sit waiting for a user prompt, usually for some third-party software license exception. Finally at the end of the process I had a new looking default desktop background, everything seemed great with the upgrade. It asked me to reboot and...

Approximation of the Ubuntu screen after upgrade

Then I couldn't log in anymore. Somehow they managed to make it so when I type my password for my normal super user account it just goes back to the same login screen. When I logged in as the guest user, it gave me a bunch of pop ups that I didn't have permission, but then loaded a totally blank screen with just the new Ubuntu background and my mouse cursor. I was trapped. "Linuuuuux!!" Since that point, I've been trying to recover this PC. I downloaded a new 12.04 Ubuntu Live CD to boot with. From that you get into the option to either Try Ubuntu out or Install Ubuntu. I wasn't prepared to reinstall and lose my data yet.

So first and foremost I was looking into similar related problems like screen resolutions not being detected. I found a few tips, for example editing /etc/X11/xorg.conf and manually specify the Screen subsection with your resolution modes. However, of course, in the Try out Ubuntu from the Live CD none of your hard disks partitions are mounted. Even worse, in my case, I couldn't directly mount my partition containing my existing OS and data (/dev/sda5) was of type lvm2, which of course, the default Ubuntu doesn't have the packages for it. Somebody has gone through something similar and I was able to do those steps in the Live CD Ubuntu, the only difference is that I would mount the partitions as rw:

sudo mount /dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 /mnt/fcroot -o rw,user ...
So that was half the battle. But once I had done that, I tried the edit to xorg.conf. I saved the file and rebooted. Still got the same "Not optimum mode" message on my monitor. I tried a few settings, but no luck. I decided to try a more radical solution: A reinstall using thie Live CD without overwriting my existing partitions and data. Unfortunately. Due to having the "lvm2" partition that contained my logical volumes from my existing install the installer doesn't recognize these are a partition! So I had to go into the Try Ubuntu option first, and then follow all the steps described above to install lvm2 and activate my Logical Group in the lvm2 partition, then try the install.

I went through the entire install and ended up with a error that it was unable to install the Bootloader! Great! I went through an exercise to resize partitions thinking that might be the cause see:
lvm-resizing-guide ,linux-lvm-resizing-partitions (note Ubuntu 12.04 ships with GParted v0.11 which doesn't support the lvm2 file system format!, so in my Live CD OS I had to uninstall that and manually install the 0.14 version.). However after all that, I ended up using these steps to successfully manually install the Grub boot loader and use the Boot Repair program. After all this work I ended up with the same result as my upgrade, I was unable to see anything when I logged in as a guest (didn't recognize my actual admin user and password).

At this point after struggling with it for two days, I've decided to just do a reinstall. I don't know who or what installed the LVM partition, or where the boot loader should go. So I just went with a straight up new install of Ubuntu 12.04 LTS Desktop edition over my existing PC and I told it to reformat my HDD


After reinstalling clean. I had still got the Not Optimum Mode from my monitor during boot up. But from the login screen onwards everything looked ok. I did start getting new errors from Ubuntu telling me that jockey-gtk had crashed. Always helpfully I did a good search and located a few similar bug reports on the ubuntu forums. Seems to be an Nvidia driver issue. So I did an
apt-get update and
apt-get upgrade
to make sure I had all the latest packages. Then run sudo jockey-gtk, this prompts me to install Additional Drivers, I selected (version current)[Recommended], it installed the Nvidia driver, but didn't solve the problem in the boot screen and then I get a "The application Compiz has closed unexpectedly." error and a really messed up garbled background instead of the desktop, looking at the error details, it said that I had "obsolete packages" and that I should update "unity, libunity-core-5.05, unity-common and unity-services". So I rebooted this time into "Unity 2D" and did the update manager  which had a ton of updates (funny, why didn't apt-get upgrade install these before?)

Even after all this, I was still getting weird Not optimum messages on my monitor on shut downs and start ups. Seems that I was hitting some flavor of this problem. What worked for me. Use your own judgement was to first edit the /etc/default/grub config file

sudo gedit /etc/default/grub

Change GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="splash" (removed quiet).
Some answers for related questions tell you to set nomodeset. I tried this but had negative results...

Uncomment and change GRUB_GFXMODE=1280x1024
Default was something like 640x480, the 1280 resolution was the "optimum" resolution displayed by monitor in the error messages I was getting in start up.

Next update grub
sudo update-grub

I think followed steps in the above linked question's answer for the purple start up screen to force the graphics drivers to be loaded in start up by configuring
/etc/initramfs-tools/conf.d/splash.

Lastly, the other quirk which apparently is benign? Was that in the System Settings > Details it was reporting an "Unknown" graphics driver. This is apparently due to a missing library(?) mesa-utils that is needed for displaying the graphics driver information:
http://askubuntu.com/questions/151608/details-window-showing-unknown-driver-for-graphics
So following the steps:
sudo apt-get install mesa-utils

Solved that issue. A few reboots later and the splash screen came up and the login works fine on my brand new re-installed Ubuntu 12.04. Gotta love "Linux for Human Beings".

Edit: Courtesy of this Google+ post when #Linux briefly trended

Linux...

List of things I did not care for in Prometheus

spoiler alert!

I watched the movie Prometheus a few weekends ago, it was a decent sci-fi movie, in my opinion the more big sci-fi epics that are made, the better. Others have said similar things as I am about to. I recommend everyone read Bad Astronomy's review. In this post going to stick more to the bad science than the bad plot. Except for FTL travel, I don't care about that, I hate when people bring that up as a problem in movies, yes we know there is no currently known way to travel faster than light according to the General Theory of Relativity.


List of things I did not care for in Prometheus.

Sound in space. If there are no lasers or big explosions to make things exciting, you don't need sounds in space. You didn't need it in 2001: A Space Oddessy, so I don't know why every sci-fi movie since then feels the need to add sounds when there is an external shot of a space ship. Silence is unnatural and heightens the spookiness of space travel.

The spaceship Prometheus directly lands on the planet. Ok so they must have some super source of energy to fly FTL, but for some reason it bugs me they land their main ship directly on the planet surface. In Alien the Nostromo separated from the cargo portion of the ship, same thing in Aliens with the drop ship bringing the crew from the Sulaco which remained in orbit. Both of those movies are set at a later date, so it may be implying that these are one of the first expeditions to other star systems? Even so, it would seem technologically easier to construct an interstellar FTL ship without having to worry about landing it in on a planet with gravity and an atmosphere, let alone taking off again.

Another way you might expect them to economize their travel is by manufacturing things from the planet when they land, either fuel, or oxygen, water, etc.. all things you might not want to carry all that extra mass. I assume if you have some kind of infinite fusion drive energy source you might be able to get away with not bothering to do that, although unless they have super compression techniques, there didn't seem to be big storage tanks or anything on the Prometheus to hold the matter they would need for things like breathing and drinking. Another area where it would have been a nice thing to show them actually do for once in a sci-fi movie.

The purpose of the trip is supposed to be a scientific study but all the scientists immediately run out and dive into the first structure they see. There is no systematic mapping of the area, they landed near the first spot they came across. Even if they just land somewhere that seems interesting, if they had left the main ship in orbit or even just some remote satellites they could have begun mapping the entire world for any other interesting areas. That's not to mention that there are no efforts to survey the outside of the structure.

As has been pointed out elsewhere, the scientists run around touching everything they see. The one thing they do which makes sense are sending those small robots to map out the interior, the one good idea they have seemingly. David has some ulterior motives in his programming, so I can give him a pass, although it seemed silly for the android to be the one to take the "touch first, ask questions later" approach to levels higher than the other scientists could possibly do. Overall everyone seemed pretty underwhelmed that they had in fact found an alien civilization at all! Even the remains of one would be a momentous archaeological find. It seemed like they were not interested in studying anything, and I guess it would be emotional but they seemed more greedy than amazed by anything they saw. If I remember the Alien series, there was no confirmed alien/xenomorph life on any planet ever surveyed, and since this was earlier than those movies, this would be the first proof of life outside of Earth, another amazing discovery by itself.

What was the one Engineer alien doing there asleep all this time? Did he come there after everyone else died and was trying to do something? Or did he go to sleep before all the others and didn't know that things went to shit for all the other Engineers? If so why wouldn't no one wake him? Or why would he be sleeping on a stationary ship in the first place while the others were there doing some work.

The first thing the Engineer does is start trying to kill everyone.  That was probably the low-point for me in the movie. So predictable and B-movie-ish. No dialog, no explanation, nothing profound from the mouth one of the creators of the human race, not even a thank you for waking him from his several thousand year hibernation or sleep. Maybe they are inherently violent, although the opening scene would seem to imply some sort of more thoughtful existence. It would have been better if he didn't physically try to hulk smash everyone but instead if his actions were more intelligently shown to trick or trap the humans, or even experiment on them. At that moment he would have no idea whether or not there were 100 armed soldiers just outside, what he did was careless and incomprehensible.

Plenty of unanswered plot points (I can't take full credit for these, thanks to my bro for expressing better than I can):
-- Why did the engineers, create humans billions of years ago, then come back to earth several times over our history to tell us about a military base they were building to eventually use to destroy us? Were those runes or cave paintings an invitation or warning?
-- So the engineers were planning on wiping out Earth with the goo, but something went wrong and they all died except for the one engineer who went to sleep before the others? Why are only the corpses of the engineers left but not the xenomorphs or whatever it was that killed them?
-- Did the rest of the engineers, the one not on the base just abandon the whole thing? The goo base and humans?
-- What happened to the two scientists who were trying to put the main woman [Shaw] under?
-- How does the main woman do this major surgery on herself, but no one seems to know, or notice, or react at all to it?
-- Why is no one particularly surprised that a stow-away, a man who had supposedly been dead for two years, turn up on the ship?
-- Where does EVERYBODY go? We see some people get off-ed but its a crew of 17. [>> So there were at least 3 in the bridge of the ship at the end. The Biologist, Geologist and Charlie killed by various alien things. Vickers met her end too. Thats seven. If David counts, 8, there were at least an orderly and two security guards with Weyland too, and presumably some of them were killed by the Engineer in the alien ship? I think you could count 3-4 more killed in the cargo hold by the zombie-Geologist, even if the number was only 3, then you're up 14. Two aforementioned scientists operating on Shaw, they vanished after being beat up. And Shaw herself being the 17th, not counting Weyland. ]



(Full disclosure, I wrote most of this the week after the movie came out when it seemed to matter more)

Redwood Road Trip

As readers of my blog may know, I am a fan of redwoods, specifically coastal redwoods. So this year when I planned my grand tour to the west coast to visit relatives in southern California, then head up to the Bay area, we of course took the opportunity to go up the coast to the Redwood National and State parks area, about 300+ miles north of San Francisco. This is a summary of my grand tour.

I started my road trip in San Diego, went from there to L.A. (Hollywood), took a detour inland to "Antelope Valley" region of California, let's just say somewhere between Sequoia National Forest and Death Valley, there were some interesting sights there too.

From there I mainly hit the coast on CA-1, the Pacific Highway from Cambria up to Monterrey, one of the more scenic roads I've ever driven. It was about a 9 hr drive all the way from where I started to San Jose. One cool stop was driving through Big Sur and seeing all the huge Redwoods on either side.

Long story short, after some time in the Bay area, we drove up 101 through Sonama / wine country and up the "Redwood Highway" past Humboldt Redwoods. Around that point, as you start to get close to Eureka, CA you begin to see stands of Coastal Redwoods along the highway, which lives up to it's name. The climate in general, visibly changes from the dry and gold colored hills you see from basically LA to Sonoma change to green conifer covered ridges, it was cool, even being July and mostly cloudy at least the first day we were up there.

It was a great few days in the parks with some amazing old growth trees you can read information on what hikes to take from some of these resources
http://www.redwoodhikes.com/RNP/RNP.html
http://www.turtlerocksinn.com/one-day-itinerary.html

Exploring the Redwood Parks - Day 1

We started our expedition from a B&B in Trinidad, CA, a great place, with an Ocean view overlooking some rocks where we could hear sea lions barking at night. Our first day itinerary was the following:

Redwood National Park:

Lady Bird Johnson Grove - First thing we did was stop at the National Park Kuchel visitor center. We got a map and directions from a helpful park ranger, we also found out that there was a ranger led walk through the LBJ Grove so we rushed off to make the start time. It was a cool and foggy day, perfect for seeing the redwoods. The park ranger was friendly and gave us a very informative tour where we would stop every few hundred feet to talk about some tree or plant species or the life cycle of redwood trees. It was my first time being around the really large Coastal Redwoods since I had been to Muir Woods 4-5 years ago. This was really impressive, and seeing the difference from the preserved old-growth grove and the second-growth areas that were 40-50 years old and much more like a forest you might see around New England. Interesting note. Most of Redwood National Park has been logged over already, this is what they say is a restoration park rather than a preservation park as every other National Park is. The hike was about 1 hour, including the tour, which ended about halfway around the 3/4 mi. loop and you just hiked your way back through more old-growth. One impressive thing is the fact that some of the Fir and Spruce trees look as large as some of the Redwoods, one difference is that the fir trees' trunks are covered in moss, lichen or ivies, the Redwood trunks are generally un-colonized due to their high acidity in the bark.



Trillium Falls Trail - A short 2.8 mi hike over some hilly terrain through some really beautiful forest. We parked at the Elk viewing area, and hiked to the trail head, the sign there is pretty misleading. According to the guides and trail description, you are supposed to head off from the dirt road to the right, getting to the falls pretty early in the hike then a loop around the forest. We missed the turn-off of course, which was a narrow foot path off of a dirt road angling away from the dirt road where the trail head is. So we ended up going through the hike "backwards" which actually was pretty nice, and seems better than the suggested in the guides. After walking along the dirt road for a bit you come to a trail heading off to the left marked "Trail" with no other information. We took a gamble and went down that path. It loops through these impressive old-growth Redwood groves. At this point the sun came out and lit up the forest as we hiked around, almost completely alone. After a while we figured out we went the wrong way as we never came across the falls after forty minutes (it also helped to realize that the traffic from the 101 was on our left which helped to give us a direction of where we were). But after just a little more hiking we met some other hikers coming from the other direction who were helpful enough to tell us that we were almost at the falls. The falls were nice, but nothing really impressive, a small mountain stream, felt like somewhere in the White Mountains of New Hampshire except for the enormous trunks of the Redwoods in every direction.

We had lunch in Orick, you take what you can get in that wilderness...

Final stop was on the way back to Trinidad, we went back to the Kuchel center and asked what kind of coastal hike we might try. We decided to go to the Patrick's Point State park which is not really a Redwood park, but it does have amazing overlooks over the Pacific from high up on rocks and cliffs. So we drove there, paid the $8.00 entrance fee (the National Park is free, California State Parks are $8.00 /per day, but if you pay once you can use the same pass at the other parks). Highlights were the Muscle Rocks, a hike down close to the "rocky" beach. The next thing was the Wedding Rock, a nice outcrop of rock a few hundred feet above the ocean with views up and down the coast. A truly beautiful place, and a nice walk back and forth from the parking lots in each case.

Video of Lady Bird Johnson grove hike

Exploring the Redwood Parks - Day 2

Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park

First stop on Day 2 was to the Fern Canyon hike in Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park. You need drive down a narrow dirt road over a ridge through the park to get down to the coast. It's a state park which costs $8 a day to enter per car. Past the ranger post the road continues along low elevation near the ocean to a parking lot. This is apparently the Gold Bluffs Beach area. The paring lot leads to a short path to the actual Fern Canyon, a small creek through a good size gorge or ravine where the walls are covered completely in a green carpet of ferns and other plants. No redwoods, but everyone keeps mentioning that they filmed Jurassic Park: The Lost World there. It is a pretty area, about a 30 minute hike, depending on how fast you go (or how far, there didn't seem to be a clear "end", you have to jump over the stream in a few places or bring shoes that can get a little wet.


Back in the parking lot, we walked across a marshy meadow to the dunes and the beach. On the way we saw herd of Roosevelt Elk feeding. We were separated from by a small waterway in the marsh. It turned out there was not path to the actual beach from this parking lot or so it seemed.


Video of the elk

After the detour we drove up the highway to the Klamath area to the "Trees of Mystery". The Trees of Mystery is a tourist trap with a giant Paul Bunyan and Babe the blue ox in front. There is a fee to take the hike which includes seeing a few remaining old-growth redwoods, some oddly shaped trees of different species and a sculpture park. The highlight is the SkyTrail a ski lift type gondola ride that takes you through the canopy of the forest up to a lookout platform at the top of the hill. What they don't tell you in the brochures is that the whole area was previously logged so it is all second growth up there. Some of the trees in their hike like the Brotherhood Tree are pretty impressive (a worker said they didn't log it since they knew it was rotted inside). The place is kind of a novelty. What is pretty interesting is at the back of their extensive redwood gift shop, is a Native American museum of different artifacts from all over the west.


Day 2 was actually the 4th of July. So that night we drove from our hotel up to Crescent City to enjoy the fireworks show. Its a nice little coastal town, very low-key, we had pretty descent sushi (probably the only sushi for 100 miles). The fireworks were basically people setting off their own rockets all over the beach and the Battery Point Lighthouse area, not exactly the Boston Pops, but we had a good time and left after it got dark (which was well after 9pm). Even though it was July in California, you needed a sweater at least to be out there.

Leaving the Redwood Parks - Day 3

On Day 3 we had a flight to catch...in San Francisco. About 320 miles away to the south. We had a good breakfast at the hotel first, one of the guests pointed out a bear on the opposite bank of the Klamath river, it walked around for a while, maybe looking for food in the sand? We then took our leave and started the journey back down to civilization, we were sad to go from that beautiful place. I kind of wish we had more time to explore some of the various other hikes, although I have a feeling from their descriptions it would have been similar to what we already saw on the first day.

It took us about 6 hours to get back to San Francisco. Along the way, I wasn't driving this time and got to see quite a bit more redwoods all along the aptly named "Redwood Highway", its quite a sight to see these huge trees right by the side of the highway. We took a tip from one of our B&B hosts "stay in the right lane through the Golden Gate tolls" this exits the 101 into what used to be the Presidio military base. They are now turning this area into a park and you can walk over the old concrete bunkers and coastal fortifications, I doubt you will see better views of the Golden Gate bridge or the mouth of the bay than from there. Very windy. Some scenic drives and delicious chinese food later, we made it to SFO for our red eye flight back to the east coast. It was quite an adventure for me, and overall a peaceful relaxing vacation.

Book Review: Von Braun Dreamer of Space...

I recently finished this book Von Braun: Dreamer of Space, Engineer of War by Michael Neufeld.

This post is a reprint of my book review on Amazon.com

Debbie Downer History of Von Braun
This deeply detailed biography seems to say that von Braun's popular image was more about fame and personality than real accomplishments or importance in the history of the Space program and even before. Not having studied the man before, I have to admit to buying in the general mythology of his too until reading this. From an American perspective, there is something very positive about his life, he is the ultimate immigrant success story, a case of American pragmatism to accept a national of a former enemy and promote him to the very heights of power in our government, that opportunism (on both sides) is very Stangelove-ian and in strange way admirable to me. He was apparently a likeable and charismatic man with big dreams when the country was thinking big, so its not hard to see his rise to fame and power. The book, though, takes a hard look at his active cooperation with or at best neutrality towards the highest levels of the Nazi regime and the crimes of war in the production of the V2. Further complicating is the probable deceitfulness he expressed in later denying much of the story of his true involvement and an apparent lack of personal guilt. I am sure if I agree with the author that this criticism is deserved, but it is quite surprising to find out he was an SS officer.

I found that overall it seemed like the author was a little lopsided in the flow of the narrative, usually moving between personal/political challenges then various technical issues without any real success. It almost seemed like he never actually got any rockets or missles to actually work. Usually by the time the technical issues are sorted, the discussion moves to some other crisis, or the next project, with rarely discussing the actual successes. For instance, based on the way the book describes it, it didn't seem like they actually had any completely successful tests of the A4/V-2 before it was put into production and active duty, yet didn't thousands not in fact hit London and Antwerp (very little about the actual V2 bombings was mentioned)? After the war it seemed as of Von Braun and the rest of the paperclip scientists spent 5-6 years doing little of anything in Texas, later Huntsville, AL, which if totally accurate is amazing considering how much attention that group of scientists was given supposedly. His group's contributions to the overall American rocket and missile field appear modest, without much impact on the Cold War. Whole chapters deal with the US Army's efforts to develop ballistic missiles, such as Redstone and Jupiter-C, were either ever used for anything in practice? The book basically portrays these efforts as one development issue or lack of mission crisis after the other with little mention of any actual outcome from these efforts. Its hard to miss the success of the Saturn V and von Braun's central role in that effort, due to the Apollo moon landings, though great pains are taken to portray him as as subordinate center director in NASA rather than a leading figure. In the end his tenure at NASA headquarters is described as a depressing frustration and his post-NASA career also at Fairchild is also portrayed with mix results.

Maybe the author was purposefully trying to contradict some other more glowing histories of the man, though I suspect the truth is somewhere in between. A lot of the details of his personal and professional life still do impress, even if he didn't really do anything successfully, he seemed to work pretty hard for his entire career.

The more I read about the subjects of NASA (To the Ends of the Solar System, Moon Hunters), the more of a happy coincidence we had to even get to the moon (Kennedy's promise, followed by a pro-space successor in Johnson). It is quite eye opening to read these behind the scenes accounts of the political and budgetary battles in government that ended up killing any really expansive manned space program after Apollo that we've all read about. Its amazing how the government made it seem like we were on this mission to the next big thing it just needed more time, when in reality they were consciously killing programs that would get us to Mars or put stations in space.

I read the book in paperback edition. One improvement is that it could have used some maps of Europe and Germany, especially for the Peenemünde era and World War II. As an aside his name is pronounced in German: "Vairner fon Brown"

Too Basic

As a follow up to my last post on our struggling redwoods. I've performed some tests of the soil pH

So somewhat ruling out the pot size for now, the temperature and weather didn't really seem to be a factor. We had a really mild winter this year, almost no snow, and not too cold. Again both redwoods have been indoors, and sitting by some windows, so they probably never get much colder than around 60 degrees or so. The only other thing I haven't really checked, is the pH level of the soil, I read somewhere that they need a slightly acidic soil (pH 5.5 - 6.0).

From a a local garden supply store I bought a pH testing kit with 10 uses. Its pretty simple to use. Just put some soil into the test container, add a special capsule of grey powder and mix with water. I took a sample from B2, shown here before mixing.

Here is the result after about a minute of settling. The color didn't come through great, but it was a fairly dark green, looking to be around pH 7.0 - 7.5, which is too alkaline according to the info I have above.

According to the kit anyway, there isn't much you can do to change a soil that is alkaline to more acidic, though they do mention some: aluminum sulfate or iron sulfate as ways to lower pH.

Will any of this work for B2?

Redwoods Struggling On

One of my hobbies for the past few years has been raising a pair of Coastal Redwood seedlings indoors, far outside their normal range and documenting the results. I have been a little lax about posting updates although its been a pretty dramatic winter.

After a lot of growth last spring and summer redwoods seemed to be doing pretty well, branching out, growing new shoots, of the two, J2 seemed to be healthier with more mid-level branches and about 20-21" in height, B2 while nearly the same overall height ( <19" ) at the top was much more spindly and only had a few offshoots. However things have been looking pretty bleak for the past several months. Here is how they are today.

J2 - fighting on

B2 - not so good

This past winter season has not been kind to my redwoods, both experienced extensive browning or "burning" of their needles and then outer branches. The causes of this are mysterious to me. (If anyone has any experience with Redwoods indoors, I'd be happy to hear any suggestions).

This seems to be related to the season, although its not totally clear. The growth was definitely slow last winter, and I recall some browning of B2 especially. The pattern was much worse this year. I had a few guesses, maybe not enough water or moisture in general, although I do feel that we were pretty consistent all year long and the few times I tried adding a lot more water it didn't seem to have much effect.

We also have moved as you might see from the latest pictures. I thought that it might be level the sunlight that was part of the problem. That is my best guess right now, as since it's been warm enough to put them in the 3 season sun room (pictured), they've started a few shoots of regrowth. Earlier in the winter there was an accident that knocked J2 and cracked it's original pot. We re-potted into a new 8" diameter pot, that is fairly deep. Initially J2 did pretty well in the new pot at the new house. At the same time B2 started getting worse and more dry and brown, so since all other things were apparently the same we thought of re-potting B2 as well. So a few weeks later we also took B2 out of its original pot into the new 9" shown above. It was interesting and I should have photographed it, B2's root ball had one long root wrapped all the way around the base of the root ball, I wouldn't say it was root bound, but I can't say if that was a problem.

Initially there were some new shoots from B2 after the re-potting, but sadly the new shoots and needles withered and eventually died.

So somewhat ruling out the pot size for now, the temperature and weather didn't really seem to be a factor. We had a really mild winter this year, almost no snow, and not too cold. Again both redwoods have been indoors, and sitting by some windows, so they probably never get much colder than around 60 degrees or so. The only other thing I haven't really checked, is the pH level of the soil, I read somewhere that they need a slightly acidic soil (pH 5.5 - 6.0).

That comes back to the sun, it seems they are doing better with more direct sunlight, so we'll give that a try to see if they can recover.

Some final pics:

J2

B2 top

The second India Trip

I am returning to India for the second time in 2 years. This time I will be in Bangalore. It reminded me of the over preparation we made for the last trip as documented in my India Trip Inventory post . In fact most of those items we still have sitting in a cabinet in our kitchen pantry. When I visited the travel clinic they gave me a few shots, seasonal Flu vaccine and a Tdap booster ( Tetanus, Diptheria, Pertussis [whooping cough] ). The Dr. advised since I was going to Bangalore that there is not a lot of risk of Malaria in southern India, outside of some game parks, so no medicine was required. I could even bring some of the anti-biotics that were unused from the last trip.

Map of Karnataka province

On a totally unrelated note. Check out this cool demonstration of a parallax effects using jquery and 3 image layers (back, middle, front)

Review of code.nasa.gov

I was reading an article on Google News, that NASA Powered Down Final IBM Z9 Mainframe, in favor of moving to more server (Linux) based applications. Its a smart move, given the recently announced looming budget cuts. But what caught my eye in that story was a reference to NASA deciding to put all it's Open Source projects under one banner, "code.nasa.gov".

Having participated in one of these projects, World Wind.NET, I was curious to see the state of that project as I've not worked on World Wind for some time now. From what I recall, all projects that were under the NOSA [NASA Open Source Agreement] license, were in fact all listed in one site, back when I contributed to the World Wind project, it escapes my reaches at the moment, but it was a very dated, plain site with many projects I've ever heard of.

In any case, code.NASA.gov is the cool Web 2.0 portal to a variety of projects, it has search and basically that is it. What I found by searching for "World Wind" was a single project page referring only to the World Wind JAVA project: http://code.nasa.gov/project/world-wind-java/. There is not a lot of information there, just a one sentence description, and a link to an externally hosted source code repository on GitHub. I don't see anything about the main developers focused on the WWJ project (from what I recall), I don't see links to WorldWindCentral, the site that hosts the main, active public Forum or the Wiki.

To my disappointment there was also no mention, no link to the source for the WorldWind .NET project which has it's own C# codebase separate from the Java project. I guess you can't expect too much, but to me the fact that they publicize this site as some kind of accomplishment is a little pointless, its a search engine for all NASA Open Source projects, its not a community or anything more. What might be slightly more useful is the related, sites, http://open.nasa.gov/ which has a blog, and I suppose http://data.nasa.gov, which links to other sites containing NASA provided data, which I believe is all in the public domain.

Out of curiosity, I went and revisited the WorldWindCentral forums, not only has NASA stopped supporting or contributing to the WorldWind .NET project, they've apparently turned off all the imagery servers serving the tiles in the format that .NET client application could receive. One of the forum members under his own initiative worked on methods to download the WWJ format data to feed in to the .NET client. This was one of the reasons I gave up participating in that project, it felt like a dead end. Even more shockingly, the developers for WorldWind Java have been asking for donations to keep the WorldWindCentral forums running, this is for a currently active project.

In Support of Gingrich's Moonbase

Republican Presidential Candidate, former Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich has come under ridicule by the media and Mitt Romney for floating an idea during a campaign speech in Florida in which he proposed a "moonbase". His quote is basically a generic campaign promise, like "I will close Guantanamo Bay".

"By the end of my second term [2020], we will have the first permanent base on the moon and it will be American,"

This has actually become a major political story, with Newt's poll numbers dropping in Florida and it becoming a debate talking point of his rivals.

I am no Newt supporter, I supported Obama in 2008 and will absolutely vote for him over any Republican in the field this time. But while it makes me cringe to say it, nothing he is saying is unreasonable, and furthermore the criticism he is getting for this one-liner reflects more on the current state of America than on Newt Gingrich's supposed erratic behavior. A sound bite from Romney during a debate has been repeated several times today:

"I spent 25 years in business, If I had a business executive come to me and say they wanted to spend a few hundred billion dollars to put a colony on the moon, I'd say, 'You're fired.'"[1]

 First of all, one angle of criticism as expressed by Romney, is that the idea itself is so outlandish that it deserves no discussion and proves some lack of reality on the part of Gingrich. Lets just step back for a bit here: In the 1960's, now nearly 5 decades ago, the US built a space program that sent multiple manned missions, that landed on the moon, allowed people to explore and return with hundreds of pounds of lunar material. This was all with a guidance computer that had a 2Mhz processor and 38KB of storage memory made out of magnetic coils[2]. Since then, though NASA and the US Government have spent 40 years stuck in Low Earth Orbit, with the Skylab and Space Shuttle programs. Regardless the technology certainly exists for physically getting people or materials to the moon, what is lacking is funding and political will. We have sent craft outside the solar system , robotic probes in orbit around other worlds such as Galileo (Jupiter), Cassini (Saturn) and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. We have had a continual presence in space for the past 10+ years [3], (not that far from permanent) in the International Space Station .

Not to get all science-fiction-y, but the idea of the Moon-base is hardly new, or outlandish either. Since the 1950s, Arthur C. Clarke and others(including governments) have made proposals for lunar colonization. There has been plenty of NASA and independent research on the idea of space colonization generally from the 1970s. Yes, there is plenty of debate even among space enthusiasts over the best strategy of exploration and colonization, from orbital space stations, direct to Mars missions or other ventures to asteroids, a gradual approach to all of the above etc. Not to discount any other approach (in fact, my preference would be some kind of space colony at a Langrangian point such as Earth-Moon L4/L5), but even if you search right now on NASA's website they have a whole Why the moon? page with documents from as recent as 2006 with various suggested motivations for going back to the moon, including eventually extending human civilization with permanent settlements. Among 6 reasons selected for going back to the moon (in the exploration sense, initially at least:

Human Civilization
Extend human presence to the moon to enable eventual settlement.

Scientific Knowledge
Pursue scientific activities that address fundamental questions about the history of Earth, the solar system and the universe - and about our place in them.

Exploration Preparation
Test technologies, systems, flight operations and exploration techniques to reduce the risks and increase the productivity of future missions to Mars and beyond.

Global Partnerships
Provide a challenging, shared and peaceful activity that unites nations in pursuit of common objectives.

Economic Expansion
Expand Earth's economic sphere, and conduct lunar activities with benefits to life on the home planet.

Public Engagement
Use a vibrant space exploration program to engage the public, encourage students and help develop the high-tech workforce that will be required to address the challenges of tomorrow.

Sign me up! I don't think I am alone either in my view that the Gingrich's idea itself isn't outside what is possible given our current technology, nor a worthless exercise. The timeline might be aggressive, with current NASA resources, although, the Constellation program under President George W. Bush sounds remarkably like what Gingrich is talking about, in a way, they are saying the same thing as President H.W. Bush did in 1989, when he proposed a return to nuclear rocket research[4] aimed at goals of a moon base and Mars missions. [5]

I could write a whole other article on the feasibility of nuclear rockets, after just finishing a book on the subject, The Nuclear Rocket: Making Our Planet Green, Peaceful and Prosperous, by James Dewar which delves into why chemical rockets will never truly allow for a equitable, private-sector based exploration or colonization beyond Earth orbit. In the case of the moon, we probably don't need to go there, though it adds interesting ideas to bring the cost down. That could be part of Gingrich's plan, but probably it isn't. In any case, its not even something his critics are really talking about.

This goes to my final point, obviously Gingrich has plenty of enemies now, from his current Republican rivals, to left-liberals still bitter over the 1994 Coup d'état, so as it is in politics, you don't really need a rational basis for attacking someone's ideas, it just needs to sound bad when taken out of context. But I find it odd, that even among the supposedly "patriotic" right-wing, who claims to believe so strongly in the notion of American exceptionalism, there is so little faith that such an idea, to build some kind of station on the moon in 8 years is an impossible dream? I wonder if this is the continuing creep of anti-science thought that is growing in this country, from evolution, stem-cells, climate change/global warming. This may just be the latest example where science and technological progress is denounced with no basis. Amazing that something that was done 50 years ago is now a crazy idea today!

I leave you with Niel deGrasse Tyson, making excellent points, explaining why we are declining and that we are losing our edge in space since we don't spend too much on space anyways...

References
[1] Oliphant, James, Robin Abcarian, Kim Geiger, and Michael Memoli. "Moon base! Freddie! Self-deportation! The GOP debate's top 5 moments." Los Angeles Times 27 Jan 2012, n. pag. Web. 27 Jan. 2012. <http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-florida-debate-top-5-feistiest-moment-20120127,0,7763027.story?page=1>.
[2] O'Brien, Frank. The Apollo Guidance Computer. New York: Springer, 2010. Print. 
[3] "Facts and Figures." International Space Station. NASA, n.d. Web. 27 Jan 2012. <http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/onthestation/facts_and_figures.html>.
[4] Bush, George H.W. NSPD-6. “Space Exploration Initiative.” NASA Historical Reference
Collection. (File: 012605). 9 Mar. 1992. <http://www.marshall.org/pdf/materials/867.pdf>
[5] Hsu, Jeremey. "All Spaced Out: Past President's Cosmic Visions." Space.com. N.p., 16 Apr 2012. Web. 27 Jan 2012. <http://www.space.com/8234-spaced-presidents-cosmic-visions.html>. 

Images credit to NASA/courtesy of nasaimages.org.