This one is from Gardner Island, just off Davis Station, Antarctica:

Enjoy…

However, being human we like to screw things up for reasons like ‘it looks nicer’. Which brings me to the topic of this post: fixed-width data files.

Fixed width data files are generally beautifully-presented blocks of text with lines that are always 80, 120 or some other number of characters wide. Nice to look at, but quite possibly one of the reasons that science is so damn hard!

Trying to extract data from these beasts can be excruciating, since it is uncertain how much whitespace is between each of the actual data fields. You need to painstakingly go through every combination of how many characters a data field can occupy, or become very good at regular expressions. Not to mention if your example file is missing a data column you have no real way of telling.

On the other had, if you standardise the bits between the data [for example, always put two spaces or a comma between data fields], life becomes much simpler. Two commas ina row? missing data. Six spaces in a row? missing data. Simple. A given data value can be 3 characters or 35 characters long, it doesn’t matter!

Sure – your file looks messy, but it is orders of magnitude easier to interpret, display, plot, make into beautiful graphics that get your message across, et cetera.

So, if you’re thinking of producing datasets: please think of all the people who will need to process them at some later stage and avoid the temptation to make fixed-width output files.

Thats it for pulling back the frontiers of science today ;-)

So, what have I been up to? Well, where to start. I got back and couldn’t walk right for a day, which was quite funny. Then I went back to work for almost a week before heading off to the north island for a ‘holiday’. Intending to visit some mates in Canberra and Sydney I accidentally did a 24 hr mountain bike race. So, I spent quite a while on the bike, and almost an entire day in bed recovering. Not really the most social thing to do, but I think I’m forgiven! Many thanks to Murray for helping heaps in preparing Rosie the DMR for the next part of riding epic…

So after my day in bed I jumped on Rosie and pedalled off to see my uncle, aunt and cousin, then pedalled back, loaded Rosie up and embarked on a ride to somewhere near Sydney! I made it to a random creek about 110 km away from Canberra on day one, tired, sore and in the dark. I had a great sleep in possibly one of the worst campsites ever – I didn’t care. Eatsleep. The next day I woke up early, ate a fine brekkie and pedalled along through Nerriga, then Sassafras [cool name for a place], flies dust and heat, all the way to Nowra. And there I stopped, camping at the traditional spot in the animal park, eating an Andys burger for dinner and washing it down with cold beer, a hot shower, and an awesome sunset!

The next morning I gave up on more biking and went for a climb in the morning, then caught the train to Sydney. It looked like a nice ride, but I was too stuffed. Ah well. Sydney came with all its craziness – after finding Harriets house [and another hot shower] I headed out to a swanky wine bar where Amelia works [an old classmate from honours days] and enjoyed an awesome dinner. I love dirtbagging in swanky places. Its fun. Met my bro Ben briefly before he was sucked back into corporate dinnerland, then cruised home for another round of long sleeping. I didn’t actually see Harriet until Friday, when we went for a beer and dinner. I crashed before Sydney even gets started, and had another good long sleep. The rest of Sydney involved lots of urban biking, a walk in the blue mountains, a play, some sculptures and loads of good, glorious sleeping. Ahhh.

…and now I’m home! And even better, I have a home, complete with the beautiful Bel, who hasn’t quite forgiven me yet for running off to Antarctica and the north island in quick succession. Anyway, I’ll find a way to make it up, I’m sure. We’re off to Cradle Mountain this weekend… Bel is working, I’m gonna have a little adventure.

Ohyeah I nearly forgot. I did a 6hr solo race last weekend and didn’t come last. yay! Rosie is grumbling though, she needs some lovin’ after all that hard work…

As it turns out, it looks a lot like the Tasmanian government had given the developers tacit approval way before the original approval process was wound up. The developers have been crying foul because they’ll lose money if the mill doesn’t go ahead. What does this say? They’ve signed contracts already. What does this mean? The Tasmanian government does not know what the words ‘representation’ and ‘democracy’ mean. The development was challenged in the high court, and the challengers lost. The response of the developing company was, effectively, ‘we’re big and have lots of money. Bow down ye peons and let us walk over ye, or else’. The Tasmanian government is curiously silent. The Australian federal government has benignly said ‘we can’t find any problems with whats going on’.

Stack that on mountains of lies and deception surrounding the war in Iraq, the Tampa affair, the GST and who knows what else, and we have a government that clearly cannot be trusted, and should not be allowed to take the reigns again. I’m happy that I will have my chance to kick ‘em out. Or at least, try. I’m thinking, once again, the Greens are the only viable way. They may not get in, but astute politicians will read the results, and hopefully pay attention to where there constituents place their vote. So vote with your conscience, and live in hope…

On to more savoury topics: In 12 days time I will be sailing south for Antarctica! Its so close, its unbelievable… I guess it will still be sinking in until I have my first spew over the rails in a 10m swell… arrr…

Hope you’re all happy – enough for now!

Also, a new camera arrived so I’ve been trying to figure out how to use it… its smarter than I am for sure. So in the next few months I’ll be sorting out my photo stuff and making a nice, CSS based, simple gallery. I;m a bit over the feature-bloated monsters you can just download. Nice, but I’m trying to make my site all CSS/XHTML niceness…. which means… what about wordpress? Anyway – I digress.

On the close-to-home front, Bel and I have un parted ways, which is really cool. yay!

No adventures this weekend – just getting stuff done, blowing out about being only two weeks away from heading south. Crazy indeed… and making plans for working in New Zealand next winter. Hrrrm.

Hope life is fun out there! Off to make some deeeeeeelicious vegie pasties and await the arrival of hard-studying Bel. Yum. two times.

Yes, its tax time, so toy shopping for the year. A new bike, in thousands of bits, is also underway. Finally, you’ll say – he’ll shut up!

And by no means least – there’s another adventure well worth watching, and possibly even cooler than Antarctica! My mate Duncan is heading off in a few days to ride the silk route on a motorbike, with his mate Ben. Its an awesome mission – follow it at http://silktrailies.com. They plan to take about a year – it’ll be amazing even to hear the stories…

I’ll be keen to catch up after that.

So, enough for now – off for a climb, after a long day and my first yoga class ever…

ciao!

Oh, and which 99% climate scientists belong to, of course.

‘Global warming’ is a kind of unfortunate catch phrase, that can be deconstructed far too easily. For example, you can point at East Antarctica, which isn’t really warming at all. However, a few thousand kilometres away, the Antarctic Peninsula is getting quite a bit warmer – at least since we’ve been measuring. The real story is more complex – as discussed in this National Geographic article. Some warming, some cooling…

Anyway, here’s a decent rebuttal of TGGWS. Have a read, form an opinion.

Whichever way you cut the climate cake, the bottom line is that us homo sapiens are rapidly trashing this little planet. The good news is that we can do something about it pretty easily. Do you *really* need that new [insert product here]? Can you walk there instead of driving?

Simple stuff, really.