Pretty pictures of Mars

Check it out:

Topographic map of Martian surface

And: Same view - but wireframe mesh


I wrote a small application (which is rapidly growing) to convert the laser altimeter data NASA received from the Mars Observer into 3D topographic maps. I like the wire mesh one the best - because you can see the path the observer followed when it was gathering the data.

The data has a really high resolution. I'm using a small data file currently (128 mb) and the results are pretty good - but the high resolution files are about 8.3 gigabytes. 128 Mb isn't currently visible currently. Only a 1024x1024 grid is currently displayed (which is a very small portion of the total map). Anyway - without multi-texture mapping and antialiasing and other cool stuff I have yet to do - the graphics quality is about where we were in the early 90s. Still has a lovely retro 'The Last Starfighter' look to it though....

I'm open to suggestions about the name I should give this project =) =)

The Ph.d glut...

Well this is a depressing read...

I found it on del.icio.us while searching for GLUT (which is this library for...oh never mind)

It's depressing what he says about a Ph.d closing doors to teaching in hs - but I wonder if you can leave it off your resume if you want to teach hs? Because seriously - I'm not interested in grad school for the money. I just want to be subsidized while I'm researching stuff that I'm interested in, and I don't particularly care where (so long as there are copious computing resources and they give me a nice office). Well...ok...NOT Oklahoma, but other than that ...