Val Schmidt
Research Engineer
Instrument Laboratory
Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University
61 Route 9W
Palisades, NY 10964
Mobile: (614) 286 3726
vschmidt@ldeo.columbia.edu
![Columbia Crown and LDEO logo [image]](crown_logo.gif){kind=logo}
Current Projects:
MB-System Cookbook Official documentation for MB-System.
SWAP Ship-to-Ship—Ship-to-Shore Wireless Access Protocol – a voluntary UNOLS standard
USCGC HEALY Science Support for the USCG
SSPAR Seafloor Soundings in Polar and Remote Regions
RVTEC Misc items for the UNOLS Research Vessel Technical Enhancement Committee
Miscellaneous Work from Old Projects:
Communications Cost Analysis for the R/V Ewing – HTML (Mathcad)
Notes On Various Topics:
Val’s Digital Engineering Notes: (sorry these are password protected) 2001-2003 Notes
Proper Data and Bandwidth Units
Upgrading from RH8/9 to Fedora
Non-technical:
Axioms attributed to the Dalai Lama.
Quotes from “How to Win Friends and Influence People” by Dale Carnagie
Thoughts On Leadership and Command
Links:
Resources and Presentations:
USS HAWKBILL During decommissioning the USS HAWKBILL compiled a commemorative CD of the ship's history and crew. Included is considerable information regarding the HAWKBILL's SCICEX missions to the Arctic. I was the Assistant Weapons Officer and Science Liaison Officer during these two cruises.
An Introduction to Multi-Beam Sonar: This presentation was given to the Physics Department of the University of the South, Sewanee, TN (my alma-mater). October of 2002.
An Introduction to MB-System and the MB-System Cookbook: This presentation was given in July 2003 at the Multi-Beam User’s Workshop, Bremerhaven Germany. The workshop was co-hosted by the Alfred Wegner Institute for Polar Research (AWI) and Atlas Hydrographic.
Useful Scripts
These are some scripts I've written or borrowed and modified. At times they've been helpful for various projects. They may be freely copied, modified, and used without any promises regarding their functionality, but a kind comment to their source is appreciated.
Unix/System Admin:
RSYNC Backup Script A simple script that creates a synchronized remote file system for easy backup.
media-prep A script which (optionally) mounts a distant file system, recursively scans a specified source directory structure for file names, dates and sizes, sorts the results by date, and then transfers the contents of the source to a local target directory, splitting the data up into separate volume directories of a specified capacity. The volumes are chronologically ordered (vol1 has the oldest files, vol2 the next oldest, etc.) and within each volume is created both a volume index and a master index for all volumes.
GMT/MB-System:
Bathymetry Plotting A GMT script for plotting bathymetry or data created by Angela Slagle and modified by Dale Chayes and myself. Useful to copy and modify to create ship track plots and other fun maps.
multi-copy A script that copies a directory of sonar data files from one MB-System format to another in one swell foop. This functionality is now built into MB-System with mbdatalist and mbm_copy.
GPS/NMEA:
gps_ext.pl A perl script to extract NMEA GPGGA data from typical data streams created by most GPS loggers and other navigation devices. The script extracts each parameter, reformats time, Latitude and Longitude in decimal values conducive to plotting, and rewrites the data in a tab delimited format for easy input into gnuplot or octave (which can’t load comma delimited files. Also the differences between successive Lat and Long values are calculated which may be helpful in determining continuity of a large data set.
datawriter.pl A perl script that reads NMEA gga data from a file and writes it to another file in one second increments. Useful for testing of real time data monitors.
MISC:
pgnuplot.pl A perl wrapper for gnuplot that provides perl’s awesome ability to parse data files. See README-pgnuplot for details. NOTE: THIS SCRIPT IS BUGGY.
Photos:
Misc Photos from the HEALY Trip to the Arctic 2003