I have been trying to figure out recently why people don’t understand what IR detector data looks like, given that we have examples and studies and in a few cases specifications of what we’ll get from JWST, and examples and analysis of NICMOS, Spitzer and some Keck data. My wife explained it to me, and [...]
Archive for the ‘STScI’ category
Science vs Consumer Detectors: Thank you, Mary.
August 4, 2009Macs take over astronomy
March 11, 2008Okay, maybe not all of astronomy, but I got these numbers yesterday from the people who handle HST proposal submissions: Platform Proposals Mac OS X 492 Linux 297 Windows 115 Sparc Sun 46 Not Given 11 Five years ago, less than ten percent of proposals were done on Macs. This year it’s more than half. [...]
Is Junk E-mail Impeding Postal Mail?
June 17, 2007I get 200-300 email messages a day in my three accounts, about two-thirds of them in my STScI (work) account. On a recent day, the Institute junk mail filters caught just 21 messages, one of which was a false-positive. 39 other obvious spam, including several with a charming oversize image of a flayed penis, were [...]
Tim Wise followup: Implicit Preference?
June 15, 2007Harvard University has a series of tests of implicit assumptions people make, under the aegis of Project Implicit. I took a couple of the demo tests, the African American – European American IAT and the Gender – Science IAT. According to the tests, I have a slight automatic preference for black people over white people, [...]
Looking for Help on FOS
June 14, 2007We are looking for help for the Flight Operations Subsystem team. The position is posted internally now, but will be external any time. The ideal person would have experience with control center systems, ideally building one, and be experienced in working with developer, astronomer and system engineering communities here and at Goddard. This is work [...]
It’s not what the software does, it’s what the user does.
May 30, 2007hugh macleod at Gaping Void does these great little cartoons, “drawn on the back of business cards.” First, that’s a cool idea. It’s a great size, and it lets you express just one idea in a little tiny format with which people are familiar. This cartoon in particular says something very insightful, both about PowerPoint [...]
Single signon, but not what you wanted.
May 30, 2007I previously discussed user-level security. This morning, I ran across this story about system administrators, and how they manage security. It seems that system administrators are pretty careless with root-level security, and that the key to getting root may be finding the right Post-It notes. I keep the root passwords for all my systems (and [...]
Notes from the All-Hands with SMD Director Stern.
May 16, 2007So, here are my usual almost stream-of-consciousness notes from today’s All-Hands meeting. There was about ten minutes of introduction and presentation, followed by an extended Q&A. The Director introduced Alan Stern. Dr. Alan Stern is the new Associate Administrator of the Science Mission Directorate. He has been in that new role for about six weeks. [...]
Does JavaOne Connect work?
May 3, 2007Here’s an experiment: They need a category “Java One Noob” for people like me. tc>
Planning for FY08
April 28, 2007With the HST contract signed, we will probably do another staffing plan. Fortunately, we have a running start because of some JWST staffing exercises that Tony Krueger has been leading. The details are still being worked out, but the main message is that work on the planning systems will start to ramp up significantly the [...]
