We Choose the Moon - What a Wonderful Way to Relive History

Reposted from my personal Home Page.

When Apollo 11 launched its lunar module to make the first landing on the moon back in 1969, I had just had a newlywed tiff with my husband and had stalked outside to cool off. We were visiting his grandparents and his grandmother called to me and urged me to come back inside to see Neil Armstrong walk on the moon. Being young and hot-headed I stubbornly refused. I have regretted it ever since.

Now, today, 40 years after that historic touchdown, I got to relive the moment thanks to a wonderful website called "We Choose the Moon" that virtually recreated the experience. A new friend I met on the web just a couple of weeks ago happened to send me the link and I checked it out earlier but was several days away from the actual landing. Today, I'd been in town all day running errands and had just sat down and picked up the paper and saw a short blurb on the front page about how 40 years ago today at 1:17 p.m. PDT, the lunar module had landed on the moon. I asked my husband (yes, the same one!) what time it was and it was 1:15 p.m. so I raced back into my office, navigated to the website and downloaded the graphics just in time to see the lunar module kick up the dust of the moon's surface and descend to Tranquility Base. How thrilling!! At last - I feel I really witnessed it live!

The website designers had live streaming audio of the simulated broadcast from mission control and it made it feel so real! I loved how the virtual landing was timed to coincide with the actual event at the same real time pace. Looking forward to the virtual event just as I had the real event truly heightened my anticipation. What a wonderful way to relive history!

This website is chuck full of videos, photos, and audio clips from the actual experience as well as offering widgets to track the mission on your computer, etc. As I have only marginal DSL service at 1.5 mbps, I had problems with the volume of data transfer that has to occur between the website and my workstation and kept losing my connection. But at least I saw the actual landing and listened to about 15 minutes of post-landing transmissions before I started experiencing data overload. I would love to have the opportunity to relive other historical events in this way. Can you imagine how exciting it would be to witness one of Julius Caesar's triumphs or the crowning of Thutmosis III recreated at a date corresponding to the same date in history and paced in real time?

Japanese use computer tomography to analyze fragile ancient artifacts

It's not often that I get to read an article about both of my personal passions - computer technology and ancient archaeology!

"Archaeologists working at an ancient tomb in Kurashiki, Okayama Prefecture, are taking advantage of a newly developed, computer-based technique that allows unearthed artifacts to be examined without risking damage by physically handling them.

The technique involves first encasing artifacts in medical resin to protect them from harm. Computer-based technology then applies the principles of tomography--the study of the internal structure of solid objects--to generate three-dimensional images that reveal the encased items in great detail.

Okayama University and the Kyushu National Museum, which jointly developed the method, have used it to examine artifacts found at the late fifth-century Shobuzako tomb in Kurashiki.

Excavation work at the tomb last year uncovered an intact stone chamber that contained about 200 original burial items, including mirrors and harnesses.

Researchers at Okayama University applied large amounts of a synthetic resin, originally designed for medical use, to the artifacts. After the resin had solidified, the researchers were able to remove the items in 14 solid blocks, and analyze the treasures contained in each using the tomography software.

The three-dimensional images generated through the analysis revealed minute details of the items--for example, it showed that a mirror was wrapped in several layers of cloth, and its surface was colored with the red mineral cinnabar. Researchers were also able to tell precisely how the iron parts of a harness were combined.

Takehiko Matsugi, an associate professor at Okayama University and archaeologist, said: "Excavation work is extremely demanding in terms of time, expense and researchers' physical strength. This new method enables us to examine artifacts quickly and efficiently, and to make highly accurate analyses and reproductions."

Evaluating Timeline programs and producing a Timeline with Filemaker Pro 7

This week I have been evaluating programs that can produce a Timeline. Although I have the Timeliner 5.0 program from Tom Snyder that lets you export a Timeline in HTML, I really wanted the ability to collaborate with colleagues at other locations on a Timeline site so I wanted a program that enables you to not only interactively view a Timeline but add Timeline entries from the web. Most of the online interactive Timelines I found were developed with a combination of PhP, MySQL, and Flash (to provide the graphic animation).

I even discovered that our own New Media Center had developed such a Timeline for one of the campus history courses. However, being a Filemaker Developer, it dawned on me that I could probably produce a Timeline program using Filemaker Pro 7 since it essentially provides the same capabilities as Php and MySQL and the new flexible relationship features of Filemaker Pro 7 coupled with its powerful scripting features and multimedia container fields could probably produce enough graphic complexity to avoid the introduction of a Flash component.

I also wanted the ability to provide a tool that could be used by Faculty to easily produce comparative Timelines and Timelines that could include entries grouped in different ways. So I sketched out a scheme that relates a Timeline definition table to a Timeline entries table. I also related a Timeline Entry Media table to the Entries table.

The Timeline Definition record includes a start and stop date and year, a container field for a banner image, a category field that is a muti-key field, and calculated time increment fields based on elapsed time from the start date or year. Using the start year field you can also define calculated fields for decade and century.

The Entry record includes the Entry Type (person or event - I will colorcode events by type), Title (name for a person), Description, Representative Image, Date, Year, a multikey Category field, a multikey Comparator category field, Select Image, Select Audio, Select Video (used for linking to the Media table), and the Entry ID (Key field for relationship to Media table). Using the Date field you can also define calculated fields for month, year, decade, and century.

The Media Table has the fields Entry ID, Media Type, and a container field to contain the media object.

By relating the Timeline Definition start year (or decade or century) field to the entry record event year, decade, or century calculations using the <= operator then relating the stop year (or decade or century) to the entry record event year, decade, or century calculations using the >= operator, you can produce a display of all events recorded in the entry table that fall between the two dates. By adding a relationship by category, you can filter the events displayed. For example, if the outline definition category field includes the values New York, United States, or North America and you relate it to the category field of the entry records in the Entry table, only events in New York or the United States or North America will display in the Timeline. If you want only events in New York, you place the single value New York in the Timeline Definition category field. If you want to compare a timeline of events in New York with events in the United States, you define a relationship between the Timeline Defintion field Comparator with the Entry category field. Then design a layout that displays the entries from the first relationship above a timeline displaying entries from the second relationship.

Vertical timelines can be produced easily by designing a layout in list view with fields placed in a single column. A horizontal timeline is produced by using the calculated Time increment fields spaced along a demarcated line then linking the Time increment fields to the Entry table with the >= and <= operators and defining portals that refer to these relationships.

If you're interested in looking at my prototype, it is available for download at:

http://interact.uoregon.edu/techweb/Timeline.fp7