Rob Newman

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News Archive

2007-11-20
Last night the Earthscope USArray project I have been working on stopped receiving data from UC Berkeley stations. Their three year contribution of data to the project halted as part of normal operations. In my bleary-eyed early morning stumble into my office I saw the lack of data and was jolted awake. Then I remembered the notification email last night. For posterity, I took some photos of our monitoring interface before I updated the configuration file. Goodbye BK stations, and thanks for all the fish....

2007-11-07
It appears that Kent Lindquist, Frank Vernon and my paper came out in Seismic Research Letters this week. It is pretty much a summary of what I have been working on over the last three years, although some of it is now out of date as Kent and I continue to develop the interface, utilizing AJAX and Comet (or reverse AJAX, pushlets, etc) technologies for web–based real–time sensor network monitoring. Anyway, it is nice to see our work finally in print...

2007-09-27
I have been working on extending the Google Maps API for one of my projects. What I wanted was the ability to plot multiple nodes at a single location if, for example, multiple instruments were installed at the same geographical location. This is typical for borehole arrays. So, I wanted clickable markers that would dynamically display child nodes with lines linking to the original site. I wanted them to plot on a circle around the station, dynamically determining distance from each other based on the number of nodes.
Read the article

2007-08-27
I spent the whole of last week working at UC Santa Barbara at the Institute of Crustal Studies. They have an Antelope real-time system, and wanted some web-based tools developed. I went slightly further than I have before with Google Maps, implementing some new features, including dynamic refocused regions of interest and AJAX queries. I also implemented Smoothbox, a Lightbox clone for MooTools, my favorite Javascript library.

2007-07-05
Ever wanted to display real-time meteorological data on your website? Read the following article on how to do just that using PHP5's built-in SOAP functions that query NOAA's web services.
Read the article.

2007-06-21
I have written an article on XSL transformations of XML output, whose origin was an Antelope parameter file. Note that this how-to is relevant to any XML file, not just Antelope pf files.
Read the article.

2007-06-05
Updated version of the RRD status plots page for the ANF project. It now uses AJAX to dynamically load the RRD plots under the Google map without a page reload, allowing the Google map state to be preserved. I improved the file size and load time of the .js file by using JSMin - a Javascript minimizer that removes comments and unnecessary whitespace from a Javascript file. Data is returned from the AJAX query in JSON format and allows rapid parsing via the DOM. I will be writing a tutorial on how I created this mashup soon.
Click to view the application.

2007-05-29:
I just returned from the AGU General Assembly in Acapulco, Mexico, where I presented some of my recent work, especially webdlmon. This seems to be a very popular tool with the seismic network monitoring folks. I also presented how I built the Google Maps and RRDTool mash-up that allows users to dynamically select a station and choose to plot various state-of-health parameters. This is still being developed into a more rich application, so stay tuned...

2007-04-27:
I have been using various Javascript libraries over the last few months in order to make a more rich user interface to some of the websites I develop. I have experimented with Prototype and Mootools for over six months, and have finally settled on Mootools. The Accordion behaviour of Mootools drives the navigation menu for this site. It is a very easy to use system, and is ultra lightweight. Also, there are some very cool extension kits using the framework - one I particularly like is the Slideshow class. I am using MooTools pretty extensively on the ANF site, especially the homepage.

2007-02-19:
Using a combination of Antelope, XSLT, PHP, AJAX, and RRDtool we have written a web application version of dlmon. Called webdlmon, it is essentially a web-based version of the datalogger monitor written by Danny Harvey of BRTT. It works by cracking open datalogger status packets in the status ORB, writing out an XML file of the packet values using pf2xml, and reformatting the XML file using the XSLT parser Saxon. Using the DOM class built-in with PHP5 and some custom Javascript allows a table of information to be written on the fly. It integrates with the RRA's for the state-of-health channels to allow web-based visualization of any channel parameters. Check out the application.

2006-10-22:
We have finally got our Round Robin Database Archives (RRA's) up and running for the Transportable Array (TA) stations deployed as part of the USArray experiment. These archives allow graphs to plotted in real-time of all state-of-health parameters such as vault temperature, datalogger voltage and current, data bytes read and written, and whether the pump is on (draining water from the vault!). Thanks to Kent and Geoff for compiling RRDtool with the Antelope version of Perl. View the graphs here, or choose a station from here and see all plots for the last day by clicking a station symbol and then choosing the 'State-of-health metrics' tab.

2006-10-17:
We just received notice that our abstract titled "Monitoring the Monitors: Assessing and Visualizing the State-of-Health of Earthscope's Transportable Array" has been accepted for the Fall 2006 American Geophysical Union (AGU) meeting, to be held at the Moscone Center in San Francisco this December.

2006-09-26:
With some friends and neighbors I competed in a 24 hour mountain bike race in the high desert of California. The Hurkey Creek 24 Hours of Adrenaline took place on September 16-17. We came in sixth place (out of six!) in our category (5-people co-ed). Over 300 riders. A strange combination of adrenaline, pain, energy drinks/food, and exhaustion.
Photos...

2006-09-14:
Just back from a two week programming stint in Fairbanks, Alaska with Kent Lindquist. We made time to visit Denali National Park. The photo below was taken at mile marker 207, just south of Cantwell, with Mt. McKinley in the background. As you can tell from the beard, I went slightly feral up there...

2006-06-20:
Using Dan Coulter's PHP-Flickr class I am able to retrieve images from the ANF USArray Flickr photo log on the fly. Images displayed on the station detail page are the top pick of the images and photos of the sites from the cardinal directions.

2006-06-11:
Kent Lindquist and I gave a talk on the Antelope-PHP interface to the Antelope User's Group Meeting at the IRIS Meeting in Tucson, Arizona. You can download a PDF version of the talk below.

• Antelope & PHP (or getting your real time data on the web)

2006-03-20:
A category 5 Tropical Cyclone (named "Larry") blasted it's way through Innisfail, in tropical North Queensland, over the weekend. It pretty much destroyed the town and surrounding region. This is very upsetting for me personally as I lived in Townsville, a couple of hours drive to the south, for 4 years, and have close friends who have family in the region affected. But, seeing as I am a visualization geek, I of course made a Quicktime movie of the satellite imagery of the event. You can view it by clicking on the Quicktime movie link below.
Read about the event.
Credits: NRL Monterey Marine Meteorology Division

• Quicktime movie of Tropical Cyclone Larry hitting the North Queensland coast (6 fps, images were taken ~ every hour)

2006-02-26:
My PhD advisor Tim Bell and I have just had a paper published by the Geological Society of America (GSA) titled “Appalachian orogenesis: The role of repeated gravitational collapse”. The article is available online.

2006-01-10:
This month's PHP International Magazine contains an interview with Kent Lindquist and myself about using PHP for creating web-based environmental monitoring applications for the ROADNet and ANF projects. The article is titled "PHP From the Shop Floor" and was written by Elizabeth Naramore.

• PDF of the interview

2004-05-18:
I won the UCSD 2003-2004 Marine Sciences Exemplary Staff Employee of the Year award this year. The award ceremony was held on the UCSD upper campus but I was unable to attend as I was meeting my new nephew Samuel in England. Much to her chagrin, my wife accepted the award on my behalf.