Dominic Landucci: Mission Day 1: Tuesday, March 7th, 2006
Well here we are, back on track. After the “troubled seas” with our budget issues, it feels good to start our first mission of 2006. I will be part of the top side support on this short mission and am excited to see the outcome of some new video we introduced to the habitat. To give the public better streaming video we are using new servers to encode each camera feed in a mpeg4 format. This reduces the bandwidth needed for good quality streaming video and can be decoded by various players (decoders). The video server that will be handling the connections topside is running open source server software called “Darwin streaming server” and works well with the popular QuickTime player. Another new feature we are testing out this mission is the new Journal entry system. The new “blog” is managed by the Wordpress content management system, making it very easy for Aquanauts to post journal entries. This will also allow for some interaction from the public with a comment section. All posts will first be reviewed before being published to the site. This new blog also features an RSS feed. You can subscribe to this feed and be informed any time the blog is updated. To subscribe, click the “RSS” link at the top of the page. Aaron also added a very nice “help” link to walk you through this process if you have any troubles getting started. It’s about noon now and the Aquanauts should be preparing to work their way to the habitat to start the mission. Off to the Watch desk I go!
4 Responses So Far
Rob Trepeta | March 8th, 2006
Hello. It is good to see Aquarius in the water. I monitor stuff like this mostly for general interest, partly related to my work. I am a Navy Officer and an Anti-Submarine Warfare Specialist, and I try to keep abreast of undersea research. While the current mission in Aquarius doesn’t have any direct bearing on undersea warfare, it is still pretty darn cool. Keep up the great work and I look forward to reading your future blogs. Regards,
LCDR Rob Trepeta
ASW School Department Head
CSCS Learning Site Norfolk
(757) 444-1641 ext 404
robert.trepeta@navy.mil
Dominic Landucci | March 8th, 2006
Rob, thanks for the kind words. We are also excited about this mission and the ones to come. Look out for our collaborative mission with NASA coming up in April.
Sandi Turpin | March 8th, 2006
Howdy down below,
Checkin’ in from NEDU in Panama City, FL. I have the great pleasure of working with these fine men you have locked up.
Just wanted to say hi and hope everyone is doing great and the dive is successful! See you back in PC.
Sandi Turpin
Projects Assistant
Navy Experimental Diving Unit
Derek Prowse | March 9th, 2006
Awesome choice using WordPress as a platform for the journals. I’ve used Wordpress (and Moveable Type before that) as a blogging tool for a while. And, just to be clear, after helping with the stocking of the hab for Neemo 8 I grabbed a laptop down there and was the first person to blog from Aquarius.
Awesome choice in terms of choosing Darwin, too. I run a Darwin webserver, and have run a couple of live feeds off of it in the past. Fun fun fun.
Cheers,
Derek.