Not sure if the Lenovo Carbon would work for you instead of the Surface but you could take a look. Newegg has refurbished stuff on sale now and then. NOS as well. Well NOS not NAAUUUSS!!!!!

The project is going to be about 1387 gigapixels and will take almost a month if we put 10 computers on it. Wow.

Yikes

We are off to the PCA breakfast. It is down in Moore, OK right in the area that was hit by the recent F5 tornado. The area is totally rebuilt now and looks like nothing ever happened. It is 18 miles from here.

Is there anyone running a "Mapping" farm like the render farms for video stuff?

If not maybe that is something you guys could do?

Yes, several of the big boys do the image processing for money. The software maker themselves do it as well. We asked them about doing a job we finished flying today. They quoted $6,000 for the processing. That told us we have a budget of six grand to buy computers. Well not quite, we "rent" the extra "seats" per CPU for $450 per CPU. We can get a 30 day lease on 4 more seats to add to the one we have now and throw all that at the project and it will be done in 12 days. We bought the last computer for just over 700 bucks. That will bring us up the the 5 CPUs needed to do it in two weeks, or less. And we will have one more computer to keep.

That huge job will require that we buy 5 more computers, and add those to the 5 we have. And then we can get it done a couple of weeks. (In theory) and that assumes everything runs perfect, all the time and no issues.

Out of curiosity how quickly does the $6000 processing get it done?

And wouldn't you basically need to send the file on a hard drive?

Several years ago a friend was really excited about being able to do processing on-line. Don't think he understands when the processing is done on big files and produces big files you have to get the files there and back.

Nephew runs his classic car parts manufacturing business with on-line processing and data storage instead of on-site like the company I work for. He claims it is much faster and more real time. The only network traffic to-from the host is only the review/input/output screens and reports. Instead of having a whole IT team he just has two guys and says they work from home like me unless there is problem with a user's computer or the network they can't fix remotely. Says he very rarely sees them.

We would have to send a hard drive and it takes them two weeks, and they send the drive back after we send a big check.

We prefer to do it ourselves and buy computers that we will own.

Can understand the owning you own resources thing. Especially if for the same monies you can do the job in the same time without the travel time.

Also, it seems to me that handing your data, that you depend on to make a living, to a third party for (losing, corrupting, etc.) processing seems like a bit of a risk.

Copy that

Yea, it is all pluses for doing it ourselves, except it is a lot of work on our part. Mostly tedious setup then lots of waiting and monitoring to make sure it is behaving. The most important part is accuracy. If we do it ourselves we can spend the time to be exacting on getting the ground control entered accurately as possible.
There is a set of basic standards called the national map accuracy standards. If we do it ourselves we can work hard on meeting or exceeding the standards. If we pay to have it done we still spend lots of time double checking the provider met the standards.
Lots of the BIG companies send the data off to India and get it processed cheap. And just claim to meet the standards and hope they don’t get called out. If they do they just fix the issue but the data could be in use for projects and they have to pay to redo those.
We want it as good as the budget will allow. Of course the client wants super accurate maps for bargain price. We have to work within their cheap ass budget and do the best possible.

Happy good day!

Going to fix my Christmas Decoration today.

Have a 5 foot wreath I put on my garage gable. It is just a basic greenery wreath with a big red bow on the top.

Last year I put solar powered LED lights in the greenery. At night it just makes a lit circle. This year I found a replacement for the red bow that has lights built in. It runs off of batteries. Going to try to wire the bow into the other lights so it will be solar powered as well. Hope all the LEDs are the same voltage and the battery pack on the solar panel can power both strings of LEDs.

It is convenient having it light up and not having to run any wires to plug it in or turn it on and off.

If you could see my chimney from the street think it would be funny to put a CAUTION, Enter at your own risk, sign on it big enough it could be read by passers by.

Haven't had any hootin the past week. Guess hootinanny season is over.

Dang it, solar power pack won't charge. Now it has become a challenge!

The new light up gitzy red cloth bow with a wire frame does look better than the old flocked red abs plastic bow.

Now if I can just get all them little LED bubs to light up.

Trying to get this Christmas gable wreath lighting up I seem to be developing more and more of a Bah Humbug attitude.

The Christmas tree is up and decorated. I also hung the outdoor lights. Ho ho ho and a Bah! Humbug! to y'all. :D

My Christmas decoration, a wreath on the gable above the garage door.

http://www.zipbang.com/photos/wreath1.jpg

Festive for a single guy, eh? Ha ha ha, Meli Clissimas.

Good Monday morning all.

It is weird working from home and for myself in that I do business things 7 days a week. Yesterday was a little busy. As I was taking a shower this morning I was convinced it was Tuesday. Yesterday felt like a Monday. But here it is Monday again.

My partner flew a project yesterday and had some indications the laptop was not keeping up with the USB port and capturing the images as they were shot. Sure enough, we have missed exposures. (insert very long string of profane words here , nope keep inserting for a while longer)

The project site is 2.5 hours away in the airplane so 5 hours of travel time (aircraft rental) down the drain. Plus the time for the project flight. Ah well, its only money. More profanity is appropriate here.

morning all. Long weekend spent 4 hours in the ER with dad on Saturday night. Surgery to remove a lymph node is Wednesday. Let hope they get treatment under way asap.