ISIS, Tweeting, Hooked on the fly, Biorbs

First off ISIS has been updated to 3.1.20 and it looks like a few useful features have been added –

The special pixel tool now allows the user to select a background color for viewports. The default background color is black and can be changed the same way special pixel colors can be set.

The stretch tool now has an advanced stretch dialog that allows the user to view and modify more advanced stretches. Stretches that are currently implemented are –

Linear Stretch – Stretch from a minimum value to a maximum value.
Binary Stretch – Map a window of values to 255, and map everything outside of the window to 0.
Sawtooth Stretch – Map across a number of sawtooths.
Manual Stretch – Manually insert stretch pairs.

In order to view and edit the advanced stretches, open the advanced dialog in the stretch tool by clicking on the ‘Advanced’ button. This will open a dialog that shows a graph of the active viewport’s histogram and the current advanced stretch. The user can select different advanced stretches from the drop down menu, and edit these stretches using their respective parameters in the parameters area. There is also a button to ‘flash’ between the current advanced stretch and the global stretch of the viewport. The graph that displays the viewport’s histogram also allows the user to change the range of the histogram by moving the min/max slider or entering a valid min/max.

Check the USGS release thread for more information.

The documentary for which I created a small World Wind video clip, Hooked on the fly, has been commissioned for a season on The Sportsman Channel in the U.S.  and I will be looking forward to working with George to create some more cool looking clips to intro each episode, so watch out for that in early 2010.

I have started to Tweet, I have really been trying hard to avoid twitter, but I have finally succumbed to the inevitable, maybe it will be useful when I don’t feel like making a blog post or for minor World Wind news updates, maybe I’ll get bored of  it, we’ll see.

Lastly I am rather annoyed that the LED light I bought for my Biorb stopped working, and even more annoyed that it is due to poor build quality, it turns out the wire inside the plastic coating of the power lead has corroded (see the image below), now this is an item specifically designed for a fish tank so why wasn’t it tested for water resistance?  The LED light itself fits in the Biorb’s lid with the power cable outside the tank so it can only be getting minor splashes on it, maybe these splashes contain amonia from the fish in the tank, but even so it is designed for an aquarium so that should have been considered, I would suggest anyone considering paying £60 for one of these things to not bother wasting your money.  I did cut the corroded piece of wire out and reconnected it, but I doubt it will last too long.