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2010/1/28 Hitoshi Harada <umi(dot)tanuki(at)gmail(dot)com>: > 2010/1/29 Pavel Stehule <pavel(dot)stehule(at)gmail(dot)com>: >> 2010/1/28 Robert Haas <robertmhaas(at)gmail(dot)com>: >>> On Thu, Jan 28, 2010 at 9:01 AM, Pavel Stehule <pavel(dot)stehule(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote: >>>> simplest could not be a best. There have to be only a const >>>> expression. But we have not possibility to check it in pg. >>> >>> Well... that's an entirely arbitrary limitation. I admit that it >>> doesn't seem likely that someone would want to have a variable >>> delimiter, but putting extra effort and code complexity into >>> preventing it seems pointless. >> >> It is only a few lines with zero complexity. >> >> The main issue of Takahiro proposal is "unclean" behave. >> >> we can have a content >> >> c1 c2 >> ----------- >> c11, c12, >> c21, c22 >> >> and result of string_agg(c1, c2) >> >> have to be ?? c11 c12 c21 or c11 c22 c21 ?? What if some content of c2 >> will be NULL ?? I checked oracle. Oracle doesn't allow variable as >> delimiter. We can't check it. But we can fix first value and using it >> as constant. > > What about get_fn_expr_arg_stable() to check if the argument is stable > during aggregate? I newer know so this function exists. Now we can a) check and allow only stable params b) when second parameter is stable, then store it and use it as constant. I prefer a) Pavel > > Regards, > > > -- > Hitoshi Harada >
Next: From: Pavel Stehule Date: 2010-01-28 17:19:59 Subject: Re: Review: listagg aggregate Previous: From: Tom Lane Date: 2010-01-28 17:16:59 Subject: Re: Review: listagg aggregate


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Cube Alarm Clock Hidden Camera
TAKE THAT PATRIOT ACT!!! This mothersucker appears to be a working alarm clock but it is actually a hidden camera. Cheaters beware....
For all of your covert opps that require you to get in close range and listen to the bad guys you need to get background data on.Tags: technology, listening, gadgets, electronics, spying, spy, spies, listening device, toysAdded 9 Years Ago from Amazon.com

subset: commoncrawl


text:
After a two-month stretch at Core as a senior vice president and associate broker, Ivana Tagliamonte has gone back to Halstead Property.
She is an executive vice president at the village office, according to a press release from Halstead. A specialist in Gramercy and Downtown, Tagliamonte had the highest sales volume in the village office in 2008. Tagliamonte, who has been at Halstead since 2002, who often works with domestic and international clients as a certified senior relocation agent.
Tagliamonte said she went back to Halstead because of the firm's "strong support system, marketing prowess and advancements in technology and video." She said Halstead could help her to "elevate [her] business to the next level."
In the January 2004 issue, The Real Deal named her one of the top agents under 30 years old. She did $8.2 million in deals in 2003; 24 were sales and four were rentals. At the time, she was broker for the Foundry, at 310 and 312 East 23rd Street, where she lived. Prior to originally joining Halstead, Tagliamonte was the director of marketing and a sales associate for a real estate team in Washington, D.C. Shaun Osher, founder and CEO of Core, wasn't available for comment. — Lauren Elkies


text: Posted January 31, 2009 Okay, this is something I thought needed pointing out in it's own thread so, hopefully, those that make this idiotic statement would be more likely to see it. Saying you "could care less" means that, well, you care some at least... The correct version of that saying is "I couldn't care less." Thank you. That is all. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites


text:
|Publication number
|Publication type
|Application number
|Publication date
|Oct 9, 2001
|Filing date
|Aug 7, 2000
|Priority date
|Oct 9, 1997
|Fee status
|Also published as
|Publication number
|Paul A Monte, Edward Hirshfield
|Original Assignee
|Globalstar L.P.
|Export Citation
|BiBTeX, EndNote, RefMan
|Patent Citations (37), Non-Patent Citations (18), Referenced by (31), Classifications (6), Legal Events (9)
|External Links: USPTO, USPTO Assignment, Espacenet
This is a continuation of application Ser. No. 08/947,931, filed Oct. 9, 1997. now Pat. No. 6,101,385
This invention relates generally to satellite communications systems and, in particular, to satellite communications systems that are operable with hand-held user terminals for providing communication links to existing telephone and/or network infrastructures.
Satellite telephone systems are emerging as a new and important global business. These systems utilize many individual circuits routed through one satellite or a constellation of many satellites to provide communications for terrestrial terminals. One significant advantage of the satellite telephone system is that it provides ubiquitous coverage of large areas of the earth without requiring the construction of many small terrestrial cells.
In the past, satellites have employed antennas that produce antenna beams to provide coverage to areas occupied by users or subscribers. For full duplex communication systems, it has been the practice for the beam pattern of the region covered by the antenna for transmission to be identical to the beam pattern of the region covered by the antenna for reception; i.e., the beam pattern of the regions for transmission is congruent with the beam pattern of the region covered for reception.
It has also been the practice to fill desired satellite service regions with more than one beam when there has been insufficient allocated bandwidth (frequency range) to serve a required number of users with a required bandwidth, and to lower the power requirements of both the satellites and the earth stations. This approach relies on the re-use of the allocated bandwidth with spatial diversity. Spatial diversity is established by dividing the service region into sub-regions, and employing separate and unique smaller beams or sub-beams to serve each service sub-region. This technique enables frequency re-use through spatial diversity, wherein adjacent sub-beams operate at different frequencies, and wherein non-adjacent sub-beams may use the same frequency, thereby avoiding interference between the users located in the non-adjacent sub-beams.
In the past, the transmission sub-regions (or sub-beams) have been defined to be the same shape and size as the corresponding reception sub-regions (or sub-beams). This is typically done in order to simplify signal routing and the overall system architecture. FIG. 1 depicts an example of a multibeam antenna beam pattern that can be used for both reception by user terminals (downlink) and transmission from user terminals (uplink). That is, the downlink beam pattern and the uplink beam pattern are substantially identical, or congruent, at the surface of the earth. In FIG. 1 the service region (SR) is partitioned into 16 sub-regions, individual ones of which are serviced by one sub-beam (assuming no sub-beam overlap). The pattern is characterized by a central sub-beam 1, a ring of six inner sub-beams (2-7), and a ring of nine outer sub-beams (8-16). Phased arrays are one suitable antenna type for generating such beam patterns. Reference in this regard can be had to, by example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,422,647, issued Jun. 6, 1995, entitled "Mobile Communication Satellite Payload", by E. Hirshfield and C. A. Tsao; U.S. Pat. No. 5,283,587, issued Feb. 1, 1994, entitled "Active Transmit Phased Array Antenna", by E. Hirshfield; and to U.S. Pat. No. 5,504,493, issued Apr. 2, 1996, entitled "Active Transmit Phased Array Antenna with Amplitude Taper", by E. Hirshfield.
More particularly, in the past satellites used for duplex communications have (as best as could be designed) congruent antenna beam coverage areas for a given uplink and downlink. For example, if a satellite has a certain coverage area and that coverage area is covered by sixteen separate beams (sub-beams) for the uplink and downlink, the sixteen beam coverage areas for the uplink are the same coverage areas for the downlink (with boundary lines located within, for example, 30 miles of one another), as shown in FIG. 1.
That is, in the conventional implementations of satellites used for duplex communications, the antenna beam area of the service links was designed to be the same for the uplink and the downlink. This was done for simplicity in satellite antenna design, simplicity in ground operations, and, when using conventional parabolic antennas, the antenna design optimization could be the same for the uplink frequency and the downlink frequency.
The inventors have realized that the use of fixed congruent sub-beams for transmission and reception, as in FIG. 1, can in some instances result in inefficiencies and a loss of overall system flexibility.
It is a first object and advantage of the invention to provide a satellite communication system having sub-beam patterns that overcome the foregoing and other problems.
It is a further object and advantage of this invention to provide a satellite communication system wherein individual satellites each service a congruent uplink and downlink service region, but wherein the sub-regions (or sub-beams) are non-congruent.
It is a further object of this invention to provide a satellite communication system that employs non-congruent antenna beam coverage areas for the uplink and downlink, with the antenna beam coverage areas being separately optimized for each of the uplink and the downlink without consideration for the antenna beam coverage areas of the other.
It is one further object of this invention to provide a satellite communication system wherein individual satellites each service a congruent uplink and downlink service region, but wherein the sub-regions (or sub-beams) are non-congruent, and wherein the shapes of the sub-regions can be dynamically controlled, either from a ground station or the satellite, as a function of current or expected signal routing constraints, system loading, and other factors.
The foregoing and other problems are overcome and the objects of the invention are realized by methods and apparatus in accordance with embodiments of this invention.
The inventors have realized that user terminal service links do not require congruent antenna beam coverage areas because the gateway (in the case of a repeater satellite) or the satellite (in the case of a satellite that performs on-board signal processing) can determine which beam a given user is located in separately for the uplink and the downlink. With the advent of modern antenna designs (e.g., phased arrays, both passive and active), the optimization in antenna gain pattern for the downlink (transmitting) satellite antenna may not lead to the same antenna beam coverage areas as the antenna beam coverage areas that are optimized in antenna gain pattern for the uplink (receiving) satellite antenna. These different antenna beam coverage areas can be accommodated with knowledge of the patterns on the ground in the gateway or in the satellite.
As such, in accordance with this invention a communication satellite has a downlink transmit service antenna and an uplink receive service antenna, wherein the downlink transmit service antenna and the uplink receive service antenna are separately optimized for their intended functions without regard for maintaining congruency, at the ground, of the individual sub-beams or coverage areas of the two antennas.
Also disclosed is a method for use in a satellite communications system of a type that has at least one satellite having forward and reverse beams each comprised of sub-beams for relaying user communications between a ground station and user terminals. The method optimizes signal flow between the ground station and the user terminals and includes the steps of: (a) determining user terminal RF signal conditions within the sub-beams of at least one of the forward and reverse beams; and (b) in response to the determined RF signal conditions, re-allocating sub-beams of at least one of the forward and reverse beams such that the totality of the sub-beams of the forward beam are non-congruent with the totality of the sub-beams of the reverse beam, at the surface of the earth, while maintaining the forward beam substantially congruent with the reverse beam, at the surface of the earth. The step of determining includes a step of maintaining a database that stores a map of the sub-beams. In one embodiment of this invention the steps of determining and maintaining are executed at the ground station, while in another embodiment the steps of determining and maintaining are executed on-board the satellite.
Also disclosed is a satellite communications system that is constructed so as to implement the foregoing method.
The above set forth and other features of the invention are made more apparent in the ensuing Detailed Description of the Invention when read in conjunction with the attached Drawings, wherein:
FIG. 1 illustrates conventional uplink and downlink congruent sub-beam assignments as viewed from a satellite, looking at earth nadir;
FIG. 2 illustrates an exemplary uplink sub-beam assignment as viewed from a satellite, looking at earth nadir, which is non-congruent with a downlink sub-beam assignment of a type shown in FIG. 1, wherein in FIGS. 1 and 2 the +X axis is a velocity vector of the spacecraft (sc) when operating in an orbit normal mode, the +Y axis is normal to the orbital plane in the direction defined by a right-handed coordinate system, with the +Z axis pointed at the center of the earth, and in FIG. 2 the degrees are given with respect to spacecraft nadir;
FIG. 3 is block diagram of an embodiment of a satellite communication system that is operated in accordance with this invention; and
FIG. 4 is a simplified block diagram of an exemplary satellite communications payload that is suitable for practicing this invention.
Referring first to FIG. 3, a block diagram is shown of an embodiment of a satellite communication system 20 that is operated in accordance with this invention. In a presently preferred embodiment of this invention the satellite system 20 is a low earth orbit (LEO) system comprised of a constellation of satellites 22, one or more gateways 24 each having a plurality of steerable antennas 23, a ground operations control center (GOCC) 26, and a satellite operations control center 28. Each of the antennas 23 can be pointed at a different satellite 22, it being assumed that there will typically be two or more satellites in view of the gateway 24 at any given time. A given user terminal 30 communicates with the gateway 24 via one or more of the satellites 22 and a corresponding one or more of the antennas 23. The gateway 24 includes a Public Land Mobile Network (PLMN)/Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) switch 24 a for bidirectionally connecting the user terminal 30 to various public networks 24 b, cellular networks 24 c, and private networks 24 d.
The following U.S. Patents teach various aspects of a LEO satellite constellation, and the associated communication system, which may be used in conjunction with the satellite system 10 shown in FIG. 1: U.S. Pat. No. 5,422,647, issued Jun. 6, 1995, entitled "Mobile Communication Satellite Payload", by E. Hirshfield and C. A. Tsao; U.S. Pat. No. 5,283,587, issued Feb. 1, 1994, entitled "Active Transmit Phased Array Antenna", by E. Hirshfield; U.S. Pat. No. 5,504,493, issued Apr. 2, 1996, entitled "Active Transmit Phased Array Antenna with Amplitude Taper", by E. Hirshfield; U.S Pat. No. 5,552,798, issued Sep. 3, 1996, entitled "Antenna for Multipath Satellite Communication Links", by F. J. Dietrich and P. A. Monte; and U.S. Pat. No. 5,448,623, issued Sep. 5, 1995, and 5,526,404, issued Jun. 11, 1996, "Satellite Telecommunications System Using Network Coordinating Gateways Operative with a Terrestrial Communication System", by R. A. Wiedeman and P. A. Monte. The disclosures of these various U.S. Patents are incorporated by reference herein in their entireties.
In a presently preferred, but not limiting, embodiment of this invention, there are a total of 48 satellites 22 in, by example, a 1414 km Low Earth Orbit (LEO). The satellites are distributed in eight orbital planes with six equally-spaced satellites per plane (Walker constellation). The orbital planes are inclined at 52 degrees with respect to the equator and each satellite completes an orbit once every 114 minutes. This approach provides approximately full-earth coverage with, preferably, at least two satellites in view at any given time from a particular user location between about 70 degree south latitude and about 70 degree north latitude. As such, the user terminal 30 is enabled to communicate from nearly any point on the earth's surface to other points on the earth's surface via one or more of the gateways 24 (by way of the PLMN/PSTN switch 24 a) and one or more of the satellites 22.
Reference in this regard may be had to the above-referenced U.S. Pat. No. 5,422,647, by E. Hirshfield and C. A. Tsao, entitled "Mobile Communications Satellite Payload", which discloses one type of communications satellite having linear amplifiers and phased array transmit and receive antennas. The described satellite payload is suitable for use with the teaching of this invention, as well as are other satellite transponder types. User/gateway communications are accomplished via a spread spectrum (SS), code division multiple access (CDMA) technique. The presently preferred SS-CDMA technique is similar to the TIA/EIA Interim Standard, "Mobile Station-Base Station Compatibility Standard for Dual-Mode Wideband Spread Spectrum Cellular System" TIA/EIA/IS-95, July 1993, although other spread spectrum and CDMA techniques and protocols can be employed. However, Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) may also be used. Frequency Division Multiple Access (FDMA) can also be employed, as can combinations of these various access techniques.
The low earth orbits of the satellites 22 permit the low-powered fixed or mobile user terminals 30 to communicate via the satellites 22, each of which functions, in one embodiment of this invention, solely as a "bent pipe" repeater to receive a communications traffic signal (such as speech and/or data) from a user terminal 30 or from a gateway 24, to convert the received communications traffic signal to another frequency band, and to then re-transmit the converted signal. However, it should be realized that the teaching of this invention is not limited to "bent pipe" repeater satellites, and can function equally well with on-board processing and regenerative repeater types of satellites. There need be no direct communication link or links between the satellites 22, although such links may be provided if desired.
The user terminals 30 communicate via, by example, L-band RF links (uplink or return link) and S-band RF links (downlink or forward link) through return and forward (linear) satellite transponders, respectively. The return L-band RF links may operate within a frequency range of 1.61 GHz to 1.625 GHz, a bandwidth of 16.5 MHz, and are modulated with in accordance with the preferred spread spectrum technique in multiple 1.25 MHz segments. The forward S-band RF links may operate within a frequency range of 2.485 GHz to 2.5 GHz, a bandwidth of 16.5 MHz, and are also modulated in accordance with the spread spectrum technique in multiple 1.25 MHz segments.
The 16.5 MHz bandwidth of the forward link is partitioned into 13 frequency channels with, by example, up to 128 users being assigned per channel. A given frequency channel is assigned to one (or more) of the sub-beams, with any re-used frequency channels being assigned to non-adjacent sub-beams. The return link may have various bandwidths, and a given user terminal may or may not be assigned a different frequency channel than the frequency channel assigned on the forward link.
The gateway 24 communicates with the satellites 22 via a full duplex RF link comprised of a forward link (to the satellite 22) and a return link (from the satellite 22) that operates within a range of frequencies generally above 3 GHz and preferably in the C-band. The C-band RF links bi-directionally convey the communication feeder links, and also convey satellite commands to the satellites and telemetry information from the satellites. The forward feeder link may operate in the band of 5 GHz to 5.25 GHz, while the return feeder link may operate in the band of 6.875 GHz to 7.055 GHz.
The antenna beam from a LEO satellite can be analogized as a push broom, where a yaw axis of the satellite is the broom's "handle" and where the satellite's coverage area, that is, a region illuminated by the beam, is "pushed" over the earth's surface. The portion of the earth's surface that can be seen from the orbiting LEO satellite at any instant is its coverage footprint. The antenna beam may be all or some portion of the footprint. The coverage area has a size and shape which typically depends on the altitude of the orbit and the elevation angle to the satellite from the extremity of the coverage area footprint. The antenna beam does not necessarily need to be regular in shape, nor does it have to illuminate all of the coverage area. However, for the purposes of this discussion it is assumed that the coverage area is a circular area centered on a point on the earth directly below the satellite. The satellite beam is typically divided into the smaller sub-beams for communications efficiency.
Furthermore, for this discussion it is assumed that the antenna is fixed to the body of the satellite. However, this is not necessary, and the antenna can instead be gimbled and directed to point in some direction with respect to the satellite axes.
Having described a presently preferred, but not limiting, embodiment of a satellite communications system within which the teaching of this invention may be used to advantage, reference is now made to FIG. 2 for illustrating an exemplary antenna pattern of sub-beams in accordance with the teachings of this invention.
The use of this invention preserves the principle of congruent coverage for satellite communication taken as a whole, but establishes non-congruent sub-regions to enable optimization of the transmission sub-regions according to principles governing a most efficient transmission, and also optimization of the reception sub-regions according to principles governing most efficient reception. It is noted that the criteria in some systems are different for efficient transmission than for efficient reception.
By example, due to the difference in frequency between the L band uplink and the S band downlink to the user terminal 30, these links will typically experience different, and varying, amounts of attenuation and fading due to the presence of rain, foliage, and other such RF signal path impairments.
Further by example, differences in allowable amounts of transmitted power may exist between the uplink and the downlink. Also, the presence of RF noise sources, terrestrial RF links, and/or other satellite systems, that operate in frequency bands that overlap or that are co-frequency with the L band and S band frequencies, may introduce varying levels of interference in different frequency bands. These interference levels may change with time over the course of hours or days, and may furthermore shift among the set of frequency bands or channels that are individually assigned to individual ones of the sub-beams. By example, certain frequency bands may experience high levels of interference only during certain hours of the day, while at other times the levels of interference are negligible.
As such, it can be appreciated that congruence between the sub-beams of the uplink beam and the sub-beams of the downlink beam may be less than desirable.
This leads to antenna beam coverage areas that are non-congruent, as shown in FIG. 2 when compared to FIG. 1. There are different reasons that various optimizations can lead to non-congruent beams.
A first reason is, given that the transmit and receive frequencies are different and that the antennas can be the same size, the beam pattern of the antenna with the higher frequency can be shaped more sharply, with the same size aperture for both antennas, than the antenna with the lower frequency. This may lead to non-congruent beams when optimizing both the transmit and receive frequencies.
A second reason is that amplitude taper and phase control are preferably used to optimize antenna patterns. Amplitude taper and phase control can be used together or separately. When used together amplitude taper and phase control give more degrees of freedom in the antenna design and, therefore, lead to more well defined antenna patterns (i.e., a higher average gain over each beam). For some antennas, such as a phased array (whether used on a satellite or not), there may be thermal gradients across the antenna aperture which may distort the antenna beam patterns. The presence of such thermal gradients can impose amplitude taper constraints on the typically much higher power transmit (downlink) antenna. Thus, an optimization of antenna performance with amplitude taper constraints on the transmit antenna, and not on the receive antenna, may lead to non-congruent beams.
Also, when considering amplitude taper and phase control with a linear or semi-linear transmit requirement, it is desirable to drive all elements with the same power at the same instant. This linear requirement can constrain the transmit antenna to have only phase control and no amplitude taper. With only phase control on the transmit antenna and both phase and amplitude control on the receive antenna, the separate optimization of each antenna may lead to non-congruent beams.
Furthermore, the optimization of antenna beams typically implies high gain in the desired area of coverage and lower gain in the undesired area of coverage. This in turn leads to higher average gain, higher beam efficiency, low side lobes, and low beam overlap. Thus, if a sharper, more defined beam shape can be achieved on the receive antenna by use of amplitude and phase taper, but only phase taper on the transmit antenna, it is desirable to take advantage of the improved receive antenna even if the same cannot be achieved for the transmit antenna.
In accordance with the teachings of this invention there is provided an ability to separately change the shape of the beams, as well as the number of beams, on the uplink and the downlink. The variation in beam shape and/or number may be done statically (i.e., making the beam shapes and/or number permanent), or can be made to vary in accordance with a predetermined plan, or may be dynamically varied in response to changing conditions.
For example, the beams can be changed by changing the amplitude and phase of the elements of an antenna. The beams can also be changed by moving the lens of a lensed antenna.
In a given example, all of the various considerations discussed above may be present (i.e., same antenna size and different frequency, thermal constraints, and linear amplification constraints). When the average gain over each beam and the beam efficiency (e.g., a low beam overlap) are optimized, the uplink and downlink antennas are non-congruent, as when comparing FIG. 1 to FIG. 2. Given the constraints of a particular antenna implementation, the use of non-congruent beams in accordance with the teaching of this invention yields better optimized antenna performance to deliver higher traffic capacity.
Furthermore, in the presently preferred embodiment the gateway 24 is enabled to accurately determine the location of a given one of the user terminals 30 through the use of, by example, position location measurements. This is typically done when the user terminal 30 first requests service. Knowing the location of the user terminal 30, and also the locations, shapes and sizes of the various sub-beams of the uplink and downlink beams at any point in time (based on satellite ephemeris data and a knowledge of the transmit and receive antenna system characteristics), the gateway 24 can determine which sub-beams the user terminal is located in for both the uplink and the downlink, and can assign traffic channel frequencies accordingly.
In general, a satellite communications system can provide enhanced performance if there is high gain (sharper beams) directed towards higher traffic density areas, and lower gain (broader beams) directed at the low traffic density areas. These considerations are important for the embodiment using pre-planned changes and/or dynamic changes in the beam patterns and/or numbers. Given a certain user traffic density, an optimal beam pattern can be defined. The beam pattern will change over time as the traffic changes or as the satellite moves over the traffic areas. An optimum change in the beam pattern, or re-allocation of sub-beams, may thus be determined in advance based upon a historical traffic database, or may be changed dynamically, in real-time, as traffic demand changes.
It is also within the scope of the invention to operate in accordance with a predetermined sub-beam allocation plan, and to dynamically modify the predetermined plan as needed to accommodate changes in demand, the addition of new subscribers, and other events.
The satellite communications system will also provide enhanced performance if there is there is high gain directed towards areas where interference is high to provide a better quality of service for the users in areas experiencing high interference. The interference could be due to external systems (terrestrial or satellite) or due to signal attenuation (trees, buildings, etc.). Of course, if there is an area with high interference and little or no communications traffic, it is also desirable to have a minimum gain directed towards that area for the uplink antenna. For the case of a high interference area with few users, it may be most efficient to have high gain on the downlink antenna and low gain on the uplink antenna. This condition leads to the use of non-congruent beams in accordance with the teaching of this invention.
For example, desired beam patterns could be uploaded by command from a gateway 24 to indicate the locations of major cities. In response the satellite 22 provides higher gain beams directed towards the major cities, either because there is more signal attenuation present in the urban environment, or because the traffic is denser, or because of the presence of a terrestrial system which uses the same frequencies, leading to increased interference.
Furthermore, if the satellite 22 is in elliptical orbit (an orbit where the satellite altitude changes), in order to maintain a constant beam size at the earth's surface, the beam shape has to change (i.e., the beams shape must become sharper as the satellite altitude increases).
In any of the above cases, it may be most efficient to change the number of beams as well in order to obtain the highest possible directional beams(s) on areas with high traffic demand, or to decrease the amount of power used by beams which are on but not being used.
In accordance with an aspect of the teaching of this invention the gateway 24, or some other ground station connected to the gateway 24, includes a database 25 wherein maps are maintained of the coverage areas of each sub-beam of each satellite 22 that the gateway 24 is communicating through. Within each sub-beam are user terminals 30 that are communicating with the gateways 24. An indication of user terminal interference and general RF operating conditions is sensed by the gateway 24 from, by example, a power control request from the user terminal 30 that is transmitted on the L band return link and the associated C band return feeder link. In general, the gateway 24, using its closed loop user terminal power control equipment, responds by increasing (or decreasing) the power used by the satellite 22 to overcome the interference. Since the location of the user terminal (i.e., identity of the sub-beam) and the amount of power used by the user terminal 30 is known by the gateway 24, it is possible to quantize this information and store it in the database 25. Another indication of the RF conditions within a given sub-beam can be determined from a bit error rate required in the channel to achieve reliable bi-directional communications. For example, if the gateway 24 finds that it receives the user terminal transmission with a low bit, word or frame error rate, but that the user terminal 30 indicates through re-transmission requests that it is not reliably receiving the forward link transmissions it may be inferred that the forward link (S band) is more impaired than the reverse link (L band) for a given one of the sub-beams and its associated frequency channel. The reverse situation may also exist. The gateway 24 may also request that the user terminals periodically measure the power and/or signal quality of the forward link and report the results back to the gateway. It can be further appreciated that, even under ideal RF propagation and interference conditions, the user terminals 30 located in the outer sub-beams (e.g., 13, 14 and 15 of FIG. 1) may experience a different RF signal quality than the user terminals 30 located in the inner sub-beams (e.g., 1, 4, 5 of FIG. 1).
Having made a determination of the RF signal quality of each of the sub-beams of at least the reverse beam, and having stored this information in the database 25, the gateway 24 is enabled to modify or re-allocate the locations of the sub-beams so as to optimize the conditions for RF signal reception by the gateway 24 (and/or by the user terminals 30).
By example, and referring also to FIG. 2, there is illustrated an exemplary uplink (reverse) sub-beam assignment as viewed from the satellite 22, looking at earth nadir, which can be seen to be non-congruent with the downlink (forward) sub-beam assignment of a type shown in FIG. 1. In accordance with the teaching of this invention two beams may be considered to be congruent if each has a same number of sub-beams having sub-beam boundaries that are offset from one another, at the surface of the earth, within some predetermined threshold (e.g., 50 miles or less). Normally the beams are intended to be congruent, and any differences at the surface of the earth are due to imperfections and mismatches in the satellite transmit and receive antennas. Conversely, two beams are non-congruent if the sub-beam boundaries are intentionally made to differ from one another, and/or if different numbers of sub-beams are used, and/or if no attempt is made to preserve any overlap between like sub-beams.
If it is assumed that the forward link sub-beam distribution is as is shown in FIG. 1, then the sub-beams of the reverse link as shown in FIG. 2 are clearly not congruent with the sub-beams of the forward link. However, the overall beam (i.e., the region that bounds the totality of the forward and reverse sub-beams) may be congruent at the surface of the earth. That is, both beams may centered at approximately the same point on the earth's surface, and the beam perimeters may be substantially equal in size and shape.
In the illustrated example all of the user terminals 30 located at about the center of the beam pattern will find themselves in sub-beam 1 for both the forward and reverse links. However, those user terminals 30 that are located in the forward link sub-beams 7 and 8 (FIG. 1) will find that they have been assigned by the gateway 24 to one of reverse link sub-beams 1 or 2 (FIG. 2), depending on their distance from the center of the beam pattern.
The gateway 24 determines the distribution of the reverse link sub-beams in accordance with the above-mentioned pre-planned beam shape assignments, and/or from the information stored in the database 25, and in accordance with the goal of separately optimizing both the forward and the reverse link quality for the user terminals 30 within the service region or coverage area of the satellite 22, given the constraints imposed by differences in frequency, differences in thermal gradients across the satellite antennas, etc.
It can be appreciated that the sub-beam assignments for both the uplink and downlink can be changed by the gateway 24 as RF signal propagation conditions warrant. Such changes can be made as a function of, by example, system loading, an amount of external interference from terrestrial RF sources, an amount of external interference from other satellite communication systems, weather conditions within the service region, and other factors. The desired result is to employ the gateway 24 to maintain maps of the coverage areas of each antenna sub-beam, and to route user terminal signals as required to establish and maintain connectivity.
The control of the locations of the various sub-beams is achieved by the use of phased arrays on the satellite 22 for establishing the forward and reverse user links, and through the use of known types of beam steering techniques for the phased arrays.
Referring now to FIG. 4, there is illustrated an exemplary satellite payload providing non-congruent beam coverage. More particularly, the L-band receive feed 33 and the S-band transmit feed 32 couple the uplink and the downlink service links, respectively, to the terrestrial user terminals (fixed or mobile). Feeds 32 and 33 are each a phased array comprised of, by example, 91 elements (32 a) and 61 elements (33 a), respectively. The elements are packed into a generally hexagonal configuration, and use every one of the 91 or 61 elements for every one of the beams.
Directly coupled to the 61 elements 33 a of the receive, feed 33 are low noise amplifiers (LNAS) for receipt o he L-band uplink signals. Directly coupled to the 91 elements 32 a of the transmit feed 32 are high power amplifiers (HPAs) for transmitting the S-band downlink signals. The HPAs are capable of transmitting with several different power levels. The LNAs and the HPAs are designed to operate in a linear region wherein the output signal is directly proportional to the input signal. Linear operation preserves the fidelity of the signals transmitted, and also provides the ability for every antenna element to carry multiple independent beams simultaneously.
As the satellite 22 passes over a group of user terminals, the access to the satellite 22 moves from beam to beam in a direction opposite to that of the satellite motion. Thus, the need for transmission power for the S-band downlink from the satellite 22 must also move from beam to beam in a corresponding manner. The communications payload shown in FIG. 4 provides for the available power to be assigned to a particular downlink beam that is illuminating the same ground area as the uplink beam in use. This occurs because the downlink HPAs are associated with each of the downlink feed elements 32 a, and thus each element 32 a participates in every beam. The power is therefore assigned on a demand basis, automatically in cooperation with the gateways, and without the need for command or logic control.
In greater detail, the phased array feeds 32 and 33 are formed by multiple beam forming networks 32 b and 33 b, respectively, which establish the direction that each beam points relative to the satellite 22. In the illustrated embodiment there are 32 active uplink and 32 active downlink beams, and thus 32 uplink beam former networks (BFNs) 33 b and 32 downlink BFNs 32 b.
In one exemplary embodiment of this invention 37 uplink beams are collected by the receive feed 33 from the user signals through the use of 37 uplink BFNs 33 b. The number of beams is then reduced to 32 by selecting one from each particular set of five pairs in a 5 pole-10 throw (5P10T) electronic beam switch (EBS) 29. The 32 resultant uplink beams at the outputs of the receive feed elements 33 a are divided by 61 power dividers 35, after amplification by the LNAs, into 32 paths that are fed to the BFNs 33 b, thereby establishing the direction and shape of each uplink beam. The same is true of the downlink beams, wherein 37 inputs are combined in 91 power combiners and then amplified by the HPAs for transmission by the 91 elements 32 a. Since the feed 32 has 37 beams, another 5 pole-10 throw (5P10T) electronic beam switch (EBS) 29 makes selections within five designated pairs of beams (at the periphery of the overall coverage pattern), so that only 32 beams are active at any time.
It should be noted that, for simplicity, the EBSs 29 are shown connected to one polarization only. However, any combination of polarizations can be used.
Transmission between the gateway 24 and the satellite 22 is via the C-band RF links. To accommodate this mode of operation, the L-band signals received by the 32 active beams are frequency division multiplexed (FDM) into two groups of 16 for transmission over the C-band of frequencies. This is accomplished by a plurality of amplifier mixers 34 which operate to up-convert the L-band signals to C-band signals. The frequencies of each of the FDM channels are established by local oscillators 36, in conjunction with the amplifier mixers and associated filters. Multiple channels are combined in individual ones of summing networks 38 and 40 and are provided to power amplifiers (SSPAs) 42 and 44, respectively. The outputs of power amplifiers 42 and 44 are applied to orthogonal channels for transmission to a gateway from antenna 46 (in a frequency band of about 6907 to 7066 MHz). The orthogonal channels are established by a polarizer 48.
Circularly polarized orthogonal signals received from the gateway 24 arrives through antenna 50 (in a frequency band of about 5050 to 5250 MHz), are separated by polarizer 52, amplified by LNAs 54 and 56, and are provided to power dividers 58 and 60, respectively. The outputs of the power dividers 58 and 60 are provided to a plurality of filters and amplifier mixers 62 which, in conjunction with local oscillators 64, down-convert the C-band gateway transmissions to establish the S-band return channels to the beam forming networks 26. Signals from the beam forming networks 32 b are collected in the n-way (n=37 in the example) power summers 31 and are provided to the individual elements 32 a of the transmit phased array antenna 32.
In the illustrated embodiment the receive phased array 33 may employ both amplitude taper and phase control, while the transmit phased array, due to the significantly higher power requirements, may employ only phase control.
Furthermore, the sizes of the two phased arrays are different, and the transmit phased array 32 is constructed with more elements than the receive phased array (i.e., 91 elements vs. 61 elements). Significantly, the terrestrial beam patterns are not congruent for the uplink and down link beams. That is, both antennas are optimized for their intended applications without regard for maintaining beam congruency.
It is noted that all of the frequencies, bandwidths and the like that are described herein are representative of but one particular system. Other frequencies and bands of frequencies may be used with no change in the principles being discussed. Furthermore, the teaching of this invention is not limited to only the disclosed numbers of satellites, elevation angles, altitudes and the like. Other than CDMA-type systems (for example, TDMA-type systems) can also benefit from the teaching of this invention. Also, and although described in they context of a low earth orbit satellite system, it should be appreciated that the teachings of this invention apply as well to medium earth orbit (MEO), as well as to geosynchronous orbit (GSO), satellite systems.
Furthermore, the teachings of this invention have been thus far described primarily in the context of relatively simple repeater satellites, and the maintenance of the database 25 by the gateway 24 (FIG. 3). It should be realized, however, that in a system that utilizes satellites capable of on-board signal processing-the satellite may determine the RF conditions within the various sub-beams, may maintain the database 25 on-board the satellite, and may itself re-allocate the sub-beams of the forward and/or reverse links, either autonomously or in cooperation with the gateway 24 and/or GOCC 26. In this type of system the on-board satellite processing thus maintains the maps of the sub-beam coverages and routes signals accordingly to maintain connectivity.
The teaching of this invention can also be employed to accommodate ground-based RF "hot spots" by reallocating beams accordingly.
The teaching of this invention is especially advantageous for the case wherein multiple non-geosynchronous orbit satellites project multiple overlapping beams on the earth's surface, with each of the beams being comprised of a plurality of sub-beams, with the beams passing over the earth's surface in different directions. The teaching of this invention furthermore enables a high gain to be achieved, as desired, at the periphery of the beams.
Thus, while the invention has been particularly shown and described with respect to preferred embodiments thereof, it will be understood by those skilled in the art that changes in form and details may be made therein without departing from the scope and spirit of the invention.
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|U.S. Classification
|455/427, 455/12.1, 455/13.2
|International Classification
|Cooperative Classification
|European Classification
|Apr 11, 2005
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text:
Look for some interesting changes when the UTC women's basketball team takes the court in the upcoming season.
Look for some interesting changes when the UTC women's basketball team takes the court in the upcoming season.
Congratulations to the Chattanooga Mocs Softball team! UTC won the Southern Conference Tournament and advanced to regionals for the second consecutive year. The season ended with an 8-2 loss to the Tennessee Tech Golden Eagles. Head coach Frank Reed says the loss is not indicative of the way the team normally plays.
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Vice Chancellor and Director of Athletics David Blackburn announced Matt McCall as the new men's basketball head coach today. McCall recently finished his fourth season as an assistant at the University of Florida, and is the 19th head coach in the history of Chattanooga basketball.
Faculty and students in The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Graduate Athletic Training Program joined MomsTEAM Institute, a leading youth sports health and safety think tank and watchdog group, for a pilot test of MomsTEAM's innovative SmartTeam™ program which installs impact sensors in youth football players' helmets. "This started as an initiative to improve policies, procedures, and safeguards to protect kids and reduce the risk of brain and other…
The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Athletics Department and the Office of Alumni Affairs announced the Class of 2015 Athletics Hall of Fame Inductees.


text:
February 10, 2013
Jets snapshots: Ron Hainsey shows net worth
By TED WYMAN, QMI Agency
WINNIPEG - He was the face of the NHLPA during the lockout and now he's a lockdown defenceman for the Winnipeg Jets.
Ron Hainsey is not the most beloved player in the NHL, not by fans who saw him leading the fight against the owners that caused the cancellation of three months' worth of games, not by Jets fans who wonder if he earns his big contract (no goals as a Jet).
But this season, Hainsey has been a rock for the Jets, especially with two of the team's top three blue-liners – Dustin Byfuglien and Zach Bogosian -- on the shelf.
Hainsey played a game-high 29:32 minutes in Saturday's 1-0 win over the Ottawa Senators, led all players in blocked shots with five and contributed to a penalty kill that was perfect (3-for-3) for the first time in a long time.
Hainsey has a cap-hit of $4.5 million this season and is a free agent at the end of the year. He's an obvious trade candidate if the Jets don't look like they will make the playoffs at the deadline.


text:
John Quelch, the Harvard Business School marketing professor, has an interesting post on his blog about companies that defy conventional wisdom by dominating the mid-market, instead of focusing solely on the high or low ends.
Professor Quelch cites the examples of Tesco, Toyota and Charles Schwab as companies that have adopted this strategy. As he notes, Tesco and Toyota have gone into premium segments after securing the mid-market first. Read more


text:
For Release Thursday, December 22, 2011
MOSCOW – American movies usually depict this city as a dark, drab and dangerous place. In most of the plots there are big burley neckless mafia as central characters in these thrillers.
But the real Moscow isn't any more like the old gangster movie depictions than New York or Chicago. In fact, Moscow is an easy city to fall in love with. The Czars may have been brutal but they had pretty good architectural taste. On this old framework Moscow is actively and very smartly trying to become one of the world's mega-global cities.
Early in December, on the edge of Russian winter, Moscow put on a spectacular Global City Forum featuring a stunning panel of international experts from all over the world, especially from China. Whatever differences Russia and China have nationally, there are no barriers among the big cities of China and Russia. Both nations are embracing the notion that city-regions are the drivers of the new economy.
Indeed, as China urbanizes to industrialize, Moscow is urbanizing because of the de-industrialization of the Soviet factory towns that dotted central Russia. The early post-Soviet era attempts to resurrect steel and fabrication industries are over. This transition from an old managed economy to a new innovation entrepreneurial economy is, of course, far from easy. Unlike China and Japan, Russia has no history of small factories to draw on. It does have a very rich culture of craftsman and artisans who can make almost anything from wood and glass. But these fine arts are in competition with cheap knock offs from the developing world. The acceptance of low quality substitutes for handmade luxury items baffles many Russians.
But there's no choice: Russia must meet the challenges of the modern world. So, Sergey Sobyanin, the new mayor of Moscow, and his team are setting a course to change Moscow from the sleepy Soviet managed city to one that will compete with the rest of the world. This explains the invitation to Chinese cities is to play key roles in the transformation of Moscow. As the Russians acknowledge, almost no cities in the world are growing faster and smarter than Shanghai and Beijing.
Mayor Sobyanin is taking some very bold to make Moscow a city of brains instead of factories. Moreover, the mayor, with central government permission, is expanding the boundaries of the city to make a region about the size of Greater London or the New York region. His rationale for this expansion is to control unwanted and un-needed peripheral land uses – for example single family suburban housing that will gobble up more land and extend auto based infrastructure. Instead, the inner ring of the city, with its unused and under-used rail land and surplus heavy industry-oriented infrastructure, is seen as ripe for redevelopment into the kind of more knowledge intensive industrial activities that have emerged in Chicago's core over the last decade.
Sobyanin and his team want to get much of the non-essential government work out of the core of the city into new surrounding nodes, in much the way Washington, D.C., has been able to do. Taming the automobile, in a city where the car is the symbol of wealth and mobility, with streets carrying as many as eight lanes, is the most challenging agenda for the mayor. These are daunting tasks.
But the most difficult challenge for Muscovites is the struggle over the destiny of their fledgling post-Soviet democracy. The national elections during the first week of December led to strong demonstrations in the centre of the city. More than 60,000 people of all ages and classes called for a re-run of a very tainted electoral process, flawed – according to international observers – by apparently large scale ballot stuffing and voter fraud. Many locals witnessed these electoral abuses and reported them in the press, on television and via social media. It's clear that before a great city is re-planned, some semblance of democratic electoral processes will need to be installed.
But Moscow has good bones. The rivers and the Kremlin give the city a natural flow. The imported Parisian architecture is a good building block for urban renewal. Failed modernist architecture of the '50s-70's is crumbling on its own. Moscow is calling for an international competition in late 2012 to set out the direction for change. A new physical plan for the city is essential.
But the real test for Moscow will be whether it can generate distinguished civic associations like SPUR (San Francisco Urban Renewal) or the Regional Plan Association (New York) to guide, protect and energize the city so that it can be what Peter the Great set out to make it—one of the great cities of the world.
Edward J. Blakely is honorary professor of urban policy at the United States Studies Centre in Sydney, Australia is an internationally known leader and scholar of urban policy. For more background on Moscow as a global city, see Blakley's website: Blakelycitytalk.com.
Citiwire.net columns are not copyrighted and may be reproduced in print or electronically; please show authorship, credit Citiwire.net and send an electronic copy of usage to email@example.com.


text:
Morning Roundup: Kelly Clarkson Vs. Taylor Swift's Label; Diahann Carroll Goes to PBS; Nelly Furtado's Movie Role
Taylor Swift Grammy Fallout: First, Scott Borchetta, Taylor Swift's record label boss, defended her Grammy performance by taking a shot at "American Idol"; now "Idol" winner Kelly Clarkson is firing back. Borchetta, CEO of Big Machine Records, came out in support of Swift's recent Grammy performance, which has drawn fire from some for sounding shaky, by saying "this is not 'American Idol.' This is not a competition of getting up and seeing who can sing the highest note. This is about a true artist and writer and communicator." Clarkson, who says she likes Swift, responded by posting a note online saying: "Thank you for that 'Captain Obvious' sense of humor because you know what, we not only hit the high notes, you forgot to mention we generally hit the 'right' notes as well." She added that "Every artist has a bad performance or two and that is understandable, but throwing blame will not make the situation at hand any better." [People]
Nelly's New Role: Singer Nelly Furtado ("I'm Like a Bird") will play a hockey fan in the movie "Score: A Hockey Musical." The film, co-starring Olivia Newton-John and directed by Michael McGowan, begins production this week in–naturally–Toronto. [CBC]


text:
Kate McGarrigle's Borsht
submitted by:
Rufus Wainwright
"Now you will understand how the Russians survived Hitler's 900-day siege of the city of Leningrad! THEY'RE NOT EASILY BEET!" —Kate McGarrigle
- 1 to 2 lbs stewing beef, cut in cubes
- bay leaf
- 5 large beets
- 1/2 rutabega (or turnip)
- 3 carrots
- 1 large onion (chopped)
- 1/4 c. butter
- 1 small can tomato paste
- 1T. vinegar (white or cider)
- 1/2 cabbage (small, preferably red)
- sour cream (to garnish)
- ...so you purchase 1 to 2 lbs. of stewing beef, cut in cubes. you put this in a pot, the size of the bottom of a double-boiler, i.e. about 7" in diameter and at least 5" high, filled almost to the top with water. Add a bay leaf and a tablespoon of salt, cover and start cookin'. Simmer for at least 2 hours… until beef is stewed, no longer tough. When beef is ready, start doing the veggies.
- With the grating blade of a food processor, grate 5 big (size of a golden delicious apple) beets… or the equivalent amount in smaller ones… cut off stems and grate. Put into good size soup pot.
- Do the same with about 1/2 medium rutabega (or some turnip)... or the equivalent amount and 3 carrots (you don't have to peel). Chop up a large onion, put in pot. Turn heat on… and add 1/4 cup butter. Stir to keep stuff from burning… add 1/2 can of tomato paste (you know those little cans about 3" deep). Keep stirring it up… add pepper (freshly ground) to taste.
- After cooking for about 20 minutes, all the time stirring to make sure it doesn't burn… add the contents of the beef pot. If the water has boiled away, add more, making sure that the "stew" is more soup-like, but not watery. A capful or two of vinegar is good at this point … NOT BALSAMIC: apple, wine, or plain will do. Put lid on and continue cooking, another 20 minutes or so.
- Then cut up, in shred-like fashion, 1/2 of a small cabbage (I use a red cabbage)... add this to the soup. Cook until it all tastes great, another half-hour or so… or 1/2 day.
- To eat, adjust seasoning, i.e. salt and pepper, put in a bowl and add a coupla teaspoons of sour cream to each bowl. Soak up the soup with a loaf of black-Russian bread covered in unsalted butter.
All content copyright © Jennifer Robbins and Jenville Productions


text:
A few years back I was asked to come up with centerpieces for a women's ministry event at church called Divas in Denim. As a non-crafty person this was an overwhelming task to say the least. I did the only thing I could do–Google the words denim centerpieces. Finding inspiration online and sharing the idea with Rosemary Peacock, who is a crafty lady, diva denim centerpieces became a fun reality. Following our Divas in Denim event, we sold the 25 {Read More}
About Kellie Renfroe
Kellie and her husband Greg have been married 27 years and have four children ranging in age from 12 to 22. She co-founded Mentoring Moments for Christian Women in 2005. Kellie is a homeschooling mom who enjoys reading and studying the Bible, writing, photography, and learning how to cook.
- Web |
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text:
Starting today, Facebook executives will travel around the US to field questions from prospective investors and convince them that the social network is worth $US86 billion and perhaps a lot more.
In preparation, Facebook, which set its price target at $US28 to $US35 a share, uploaded its IPO presentation to the web.
Unlike most roadshow videos, which consist of a handful of suited executives with slides, Facebook's presentation is a glossy production with a full cast of characters, travelling video shots and upbeat music, seemingly borrowed from Apple's marketing playlist.
The ensemble includes Facebook's chief
So how does Facebook sell itself? Well, for starters, by making its pitch about more than just Facebook.
In the opening scenes, Mr Zuckerberg talks about growing up on the internet and using search engines like Yahoo! and Google while he was in middle school. "The thing it seemed it was missing was people," he says of the earlier days on the internet.
That's where Facebook comes in. Through a montage of images, Mr Cox and Mr Zuckerberg talk about the impulse to share and how the human experience is enriched by connections. There are plenty of statistics: 125 billion "friendships" on Facebook, 300 million photos uploaded a day, more than 1 billion comments created a day.
The New York Times, The New York Times


text:
Can be used to filter the link for each trackback.
This filter is passed a second parameter,
$comment, which is the array defining the currently acted upon trackback, allowing you to use that information to customize even on a per-trackback level.
function remove_trackback_permalink($text) { $text = strip_tags($text); $text = '<span>' . $text . '</span>'; return $text; } add_filter('thesis_trackback_link', 'remove_trackback_permalink');
- This filter was added in version 1.5.


text: First one of these I ever hauled. It's a 2009 Can Am Spyder 3 wheel motorcycle. I used 2 4' green slings as chokers around the outer lower a arms, and 2 HD MC straps in the rear. The green slings are perfect because the front a arms are all wrapped in plastic.


text:
1-Year Olympus Imaging Australia Warranty Standard shipping: $11.95
Fully-insured shipping: $15.95
Fully-insured shipping: $15.95
The Olympus LH-40B Lens Hood is a round hood developed specifically for the M.ZUIKO DIGITAL 45mm 1:1.8 lens and can be mounted to keep extraneous light from entering the lens on backlit shots. Additionally, the LH-40B has a black finishing to perfectly match the black design of the lens.
- Stylish and functional lens hood
- Shades the lens from stray light, improving your contrast and image quality
- Assists in keeping moisture or wind-blown debris off the lens in inclement weather
- Protects the front barrel from the inevitable impacts against walls, door frames, and other real-life obstacles
- Black finishing to match the lens design


text:
At first glance, it seemed that everything worked ok in my migration of this blog from one machine to another. But, there does seem to be one thing that didn't make the transition well. Most of my \ characters disappeared. I've gone back and fixed a few obvious places where they should have been. But there may be some uncompilable TeX left here and there.
The Lingtech blog has taken on a whole new look, and it's not really intentional. It is being hosted on entirely new hardware running a newer version of both Linux and WordPress, so there are bugs left to work out. I think at least most of the old URLs should still point where they are supposed to, and I'll work on the theme and so forth later. I'm mainly posting this now to (a) test MarsEdit and (b) point out that the change of look was not exactly intended.
Addendum: I've now done a little bit of fiddling, and the current theme is better. So, the comments above referred to the theme I got by default. This one isn't so bad.
Gaining real estate on my SL MBP
I have a very busy menubar, lots of menubar extras, and it's annoying that many of them wind up being covered up by the actual menus on my 13″ MacBook Pro. I used to use Unsanity's Silk to reduce the font size (I was using Arial Narrow), but Silk even now hasn't been updated to work in Snow Leopard.
However, I came across a "ported font" called Greyscale on the macthemes.net site, and installed it. So far, so good.
[Note! I haven't even tried this after switching to Lion, I used the TinkerTool trick in footnote 2 instead.]
My menubar now looks like this:
Below I outline what I did. I have had it running for something like an hour, with no real ill effects. But, pulling this off is a deep, dirty OS hack. If you do this, you're doing it at your own risk.1
The procedure is: Get a copy of Onyx if you don't have it already (this is to clear the font caches). Download the Greyscale.zip file from the forum link given above, open up the Protected and System folder aliases contained within. From the ProtectedFonts folder, move the LucidaGrande font to somewhere else for safekeeping (system password needed), move the LucidaGrande font from within the Greyscale archive into the ProtectedFonts folder (system password needed), move the LucidaGrande font from within the Fonts folder to the trash (system will alert you that this is weird). Then, in Onyx, go to the Cleaning tab, Fonts panel, ensure that System and Users is checked, and Execute. Restart.
Note: As far as I understand it, this will not work properly if you try to replace the font file in ProtectedFonts. Move it out and move the new one in, don't just move the new one in overtop the old one.
What is happening here is this: The systemwide font that Snow Leopard uses for the menu bar, Lucida Grande, is being replaced. This is an important font, and SL protects itself against losing it by keeping a "repair kit" version of it in ProtectedFonts. So, first, we swap in our own font to its repair kit, then we remove the system font (causing it to repair itself, but with our new font instead). Cleaning the caches and restarting helps make sure no remnants of the old Lucida Grande are still in memory.
To undo this, repeat the same steps, only move the original file (that you kept for safekeeping) back into the ProtectedFonts folder after moving out the faux-LucidaGrande.
It's not necessarily all flowers and bunnies, though. This really is completely replacing Lucida Grande. We're not changing the font in the menu bar, we're hiding another font in there under the name Lucida Grande. What this means is that everything that would have used Lucida Grande will now use Greyscale (though it will think it's using Lucida Grande). And if you try this, you'll see that Lucida Grande is used all over the place. Window titles, source sidebars, Growl notifications, everywhere, everywhere, everywhere. I'd really prefer it if it were possible to selectively replace the menu bar font alone, but this is apparently quite difficult to pull off.2
Still, I have more room now, and I can still read my screen.
1Another much less intrusive option is to use something like AccessMenuBarApps, which is not much more than a little app you can bring to the front with a hotkey or gestures and which has a very very small native menu bar app, leaving maximum space for menu bar icons. Of course any app with a small menu bar footprint can serve this purpose, but AccessMenuBarApps is pretty convenient.
2Something kind of like this can be accomplished by using TinkerTool and setting all of the configurable fonts to something other than Lucida Grande. I went in and changed everything that was Lucida Grande to Arial Narrow, and that works pretty well. The problem I have with Greyscale is that it is very hard to see the distinction between the numerals six and eight. If someone has converted Arial Narrow to be in the right format to drop it in, I'd probably do that instead of dropping in Greyscale. [Later note: One downside to using Arial Narrow (at least in Lion) is that it does not have the right characters to display the modifiers for keyboard shortcuts, so they wind up being displayed with characters like Ý. To solve this, I left my System font set to Lucida Grande, though it is a tradeoff between space and having the shortcut symbols.]
Current state of LaTeX on the iPad
Susan Donovan posted a review of the current state of things in the quest to do LaTeX on the iPad: Using LaTeX on the iPad: The best and worst apps for writing mathematics.
I haven't tried most of these, I haven't gotten much beyond installing TexTouch and playing with it a little bit. However, most of the alternatives that Susan reviews are really only alternatives if what you want to do is typeset mathematical formulas for papers or emails, being LaTeX-powered equation editors. I'd find such a thing potentially useful if it allowed drawing trees in emails (which is what I sometimes use LaTeXiT on the Mac for), but that's not going to happen without pretty much a full local installation of LaTeX (so I can include pstricks and pst-jtree).
The remote compilation that TexTouch does, particularly since you can set it up against your own installation on a desktop machine synced with Dropbox, still seems like a pretty optimal solution for using full-blown TeX. Even if Apple's guidelines didn't prohibit it, I'm not at all convinced that I actually want a full TeX install on my iPad proper. My desktop machine has much more disk space and computational prowess, and I'm rarely using the iPad in a situation where it isn't connected to the net.
Sending EagleFiler metadata to BibDesk
I have a big EagleFiler archive in which I hold all of my PDFs, and as I add papers, I generally fill the "Title" field with the paper title and the "From name" field with the authors, as well as assign tags, etc. EagleFiler is generally my first stop when I acquire a new PDF. Plus, my EagleFiler library lives in my Dropbox, so I can get at these files from my iDevices as well.
However, when I want to add one of these papers to my bibliography, I have to go to BibDesk, make a new record, retype the title and author, and attach the PDF. And then I think: I should automate the export of the metadata someday.
Happily, that someday is today.
I have put together a simple Applescript that will look at the record(s) selected in EagleFiler, and create a corresponding new BibDesk record for each of them. It fills in the title, author, and source URL information from the EagleFiler metadata, attaches the file to the BibDesk record, and then does a couple of other things that are idiosyncratic to my particular filing system. In particular, it looks in the path to see if it is inside a "Journals" folder (in which case it is an article), or in "Monographs" (in which case it is a book), etc. It also looks to see if a tag called "look" was assigned in EagleFiler, and marks the "Read" flag in BibDesk if the tag is found. Obviously, these parts are only useful if you file things the way I do. But even if you don't, it might be interesting to see how the script works.
I am no Applescript genius. In my initial tests, this ran kind of slowly, and there are probably better or more efficient ways it could be written, but it does seem to work.
Once a BibDesk record is created, the publication window is opened, and generally there needs to be some tweaking: fixing quotation marks, protecting capitals, fixing author lists to use "and" as separators, but it still saves some double-entry.
One installs Applescripts like this into
~/Library/Scripts/Applications/EagleFiler and then they are available via the scripts menu in the menubar.
-- Create a new BibDesk record from EagleFiler record -- Paul Hagstrom, November 2010 -- -- This is probably kind of idiosyncratic. -- My filing procedure is to have PDFs in EagleFiler with the -- title in title -- authors in from -- There is very little chance that it will work without any need to edit -- Maybe later I'll try to figure out how to tag things so that they'll -- detect the right reference type, etc. on run tell application "EagleFiler" set _records to selected records of browser window 1 repeat with _record in _records set theTitle to _record's title set theAuthor to _record's from name set theSource to _record's source URL set theFile to _record's file set thePath to theFile's POSIX path set theNote to _record's note text -- special handling based on my idiosyncratic organization -- look at the path to see if it is a journal or what set theType to "article" if thePath contains "Journals" then set theType to "article" end if if thePath contains "Monographs" then set theType to "book" end if if thePath contains "Dissertations" then set theType to "phdthesis" end if if thePath contains "Edited" or thePath contains "WPL" or thePath contains "Conferences" then set theType to "incollection" end if -- special handling of tags. If something is tagged "look" it goes on the reading list. set theRead to false set _tags to _record's assigned tags repeat with _tag in _tags if _tag's name is "look" then set theRead to true end if end repeat tell application "BibDesk" tell document 1 set thePub to make new publication at the beginning of publications set type of thePub to theType set title of thePub to theTitle --at some point I might try to replace commas with "and" --and if theAuthor starts with "ed." put it in the editor --field instead, since that is my general convention in EF. set value of field "Author" of thePub to theAuthor tell thePub add (POSIX file thePath) to beginning of linked files if theRead then set value of field "Read" to 1 end if make new linked URL with data theSource at end of linked URLs --at some point I might try to parse my filenames --they are generally authorYear-source.pdf --set value of field "Journal" to theJournal --set publication year to theYear set cite key to get generated cite key end tell show thePub end tell end tell end repeat end tell end run
Dotless i with ogonek.
I was asked how to do a dotless i with an ogonek. Unicode doesn't have a character for this, and the combining ogonek doesn't line up reliably with a dotless i. But I got a pretty reasonable one in Word by doing the following.
Insert field…, and type
eq o(a,b). Right click on the field and toggle field codes so you can see
{ eq o(a,b) }. Remove the spaces inside the braces (yielding
{eq o(a,b)}), and then select the a, open the Character Viewer (in the international/input menu bar widget, turn it on in System Preferences on Mac OS X), and replace "a" with a dotless i, and replace "b" with a (non-combining) ogonek. Right-click, toggle field codes. You can now copy and paste it wherever it is needed.
This will undoubtedly come in handy regularly. For example, if you need to render Piglet in text.
A possibly better way to customize the TextMate LaTeX plugin
In the aftermath my recent adventures with a development version of a TextMate LaTeX bundle, I wound up reinstalling the original LaTeX bundle, but in the process lost my customizations for special citations and idiosyncratic inline linguistic examples.
I could have re-edited the bundle (that's why I posted the instructions here, after all, so I could remember what I did), but I discovered a better way, looking at the TextMate manual section on language grammars and on the TextMate wiki: create my own language, subclassing the language from the LaTeX bundle, with just my additions. The advantage of this is that if I ever update the LaTeX bundle, the additions will continue to be mixed in.
This is in fact how the LaTeX Beamer language definition works, so there's a ready-made example to look at. It defines a couple of special beamer-related things (
frame and
frametitle), and then includes the regular LaTeX language. So, I am doing just that. Note, though, that if I want to include the beamer specials, I need to include the beamer class. Since I don't see any real harm in doing so all the time, I am extending that class which itself extends LaTeX.
Here's how to do this: Go to Bundles > Bundle Editor > Edit Languages…, open up the LaTeX bundle and select the LaTeX Beamer language. Hit the duplicate button in the lower left corner to duplicate it. Then hit the add button and add a new bundle, call it something, and then drag the beamer duplicate into it. Name your duplicate something better, and click on it to edit it. Change
scopeName to
text.tex.latex.custom. You probably want to get rid of the
firstLineMatch line as well, and change
fileTypes to
( 'tex' );. The idea is that it will pick up any file with the
.tex extension, without checking to see if it is a beamer file.
Then, just put in the additions. I left the beamer additions in, since I use those too. I couldn't get an
include line to work with
text.tex.latex.beamer, maybe TextMate doesn't allow nested includes. Even including both the beamer addition and the main LaTeX language didn't work, in either order. So, I just left the beamer additions in.
For completeness, this is what I ended up with:
{ scopeName = 'text.tex.latex.custom'; firstLineMatch = '^\documentclass([.*])?{beamer}'; fileTypes = ( 'tex' ); foldingStartMarker = '\begin{.*}|%.*(fold)s*$'; foldingStopMarker = '\end{.*}|%.*(end)s*$'; patterns = ( { name = 'meta.function.mot.latex'; contentName = 'string.quoted.mot.latex'; comment = 'Added by Paul Hagstrom'; begin = '((\)mot)({)'; end = '}'; beginCaptures = { 1 = { name = 'support.function.mot.latex'; }; 2 = { name = 'punctuation.definition.function.latex'; }; 3 = { name = 'punctuation.definition.mot.begin.latex'; }; }; endCaptures = { 0 = { name = 'punctuation.definition.mot.end.latex'; }; }; patterns = ( { include = '$base'; } ); }, { name = 'meta.citation.latex'; begin = '(?x) ( (\) # Marker (?:foot)?(?:full)?(?:no)?(?:short)?(?:poss)?(?:pg)? # Function Name [cC]ite (?:al)?(?:t|p|author|year(?:par)?|title)?[ANP]* *? # Optional Unabreviated ) (?:([)[^]]*(]))? # Optional (?:([)[^]]*(]))? # Arguments ({) # Opening Bracket '; end = '}'; captures = { 1 = { name = 'keyword.control.cite.latex'; }; 2 = { name = 'punctuation.definition.keyword.latex'; }; 3 = { name = 'punctuation.definition.arguments.optional.begin.latex'; }; 4 = { name = 'punctuation.definition.arguments.optional.end.latex'; }; 5 = { name = 'punctuation.definition.arguments.optional.begin.latex'; }; 6 = { name = 'punctuation.definition.arguments.optional.end.latex'; }; 7 = { name = 'punctuation.definition.arguments.latex'; }; }; endCaptures = { 0 = { name = 'punctuation.definition.arguments.latex'; }; }; patterns = ( { name = 'constant.other.reference.citation.latex'; match = '[w:.]+'; }, ); }, { name = 'meta.function.environment.frame.latex'; begin = '(?:s*)((\)begin)({)(frame)(})'; end = '((\)end)({)(frame)(})'; captures = { 1 = { name = 'support.function.be.latex'; }; 2 = { name = 'punctuation.definition.function.latex'; }; 3 = { name = 'punctuation.definition.arguments.begin.latex'; }; 4 = { name = 'variable.parameter.function.latex'; }; 5 = { name = 'punctuation.definition.arguments.end.latex'; }; }; patterns = ( { include = '$self'; } ); }, { name = 'meta.function.frametitle.latex'; match = '((\)frametitle)({)(.*)(})'; captures = { 1 = { name = 'support.function.frametitle.latex'; }; 2 = { name = 'punctuation.definition.function.latex'; }; 3 = { name = 'punctuation.definition.arguments.begin.latex'; }; 4 = { name = 'entity.name.function.frame.latex'; }; 5 = { name = 'punctuation.definition.arguments.end.latex'; }; }; }, { include = 'text.tex.latex'; }, ); }
Tex Touch: LaTeX on the iPad that doesn't even hurt much
I just took Tex Touch for a spin on the iPad, and actually did some substantial editing on a paper. It's not as fast to type on an iPad as it is on a real keyboard, of course, but I'm pretty impressed with how it works.
The fundamental problem with TeX on an iDevice is that Apple forbids any kind of code compilation on the device itself, and so one couldn't even in principle do a TeX install on the iPad (at least without jailbreaking, I don't know what options are open for a jailbroken iPad). So, the only way to make it work is to do the compiling remotely. However, TexTouch makes the process pretty transparent.
Tex Touch allows you to connect yourself to a folder in your Dropbox account (and for the space you need, the free account will suffice), and then it will use that folder as a way to connect to your desktop machine, which needs to be running a program that will watch the folder and compile any TeX files that find themselves there. When the compilation is done, and the PDF file is produced, TexTouch picks it up and allows you to display it on the iPad. The folder watching function is accomplished either by the developer's own program or by using Ramón Figueroa-Centeno's LaTeXMe script. LaTeXMe is a Mac program, but Tex Touch itself is intended to also work with a Windows machine on the remote compiler end.
Once you have it set up, you barely realize that it's being compiled remotely. You hit the "TeX!" button and the file is uploaded, it sits for a little bit, then downloads the PDF (or gives you access to the log).
The editor itself is nice too. No syntax coloring yet, but it has support for templates, and it has an elaborate keyboard setup that allows pretty simple access to brackets and slashes and commonly used LaTeX commands and symbols. After working with it briefly, I found it quite acceptable.
I'm looking forward to seeing how it develops, but this looks like the perfect solution for my own setup. I already keep all of my TeX work in my Dropbox folder anyway, so it's pretty straightforward to copy over a file I want to work on when I'm away from my computer and get still something done. The only problem that I have had so far is that it didn't find my bibliography file when it was remotely compiling, but I'm sure that (a) this is pretty easily solvable by adding a path to something somewhere, and (b) I'm unlikely to produce the final version of the PDF this way anyway, so I'll always have a chance to recompile when I get back to my computer.
A nicer LaTeX bundle for TextMate
When a document I was trying to compile kept alerting me to fatal errors, but scouring the log file failed to reveal anything that should count, I decided I'd poke around a little bit to see if there were any updates to the LaTeX bundle for TextMate. I found, first, that it seemed to have actually disappeared from the TextMate svn repository, but, second, that there is a relatively nice version maintained by Adam Strzlecki on github. I haven't done a great deal of exploration, but it does seem to be a bit faster, and there are a few added niceties to the autocompletion mechanisms.
I updated to the new bundle, but since I had made some changes to the old one (see Adding a little bit to TextMate's LaTeX bundle and More TextMate LaTeX language editing), I decided to fork the existing repository and add those in as well.
Additionally, at present, the current bundle chokes a little bit on files that are within folders that contain spaces in their names. Compilation still works, but the links to errors that you should get in the status window are broken, as is the "jump to corresponding location in the PDF" command. I've fixed both of these problems in my fork of the bundle (though it is possible that there are hidden problems I've introduced, particularly in the thing that processes error links, I haven't tried it with a complex master document).
Update: The sad truth is, this is not ready for prime time yet, at least not for me. I rely heavily on the dvi-ps-pdf pathway, and this bundle seems to have disabled it. I tried for a while to re-enable it, but it just wasn't cooperating. Maybe in the lazy days of Thanksgiving break, but for now I would recommend against installing this bundle.
To install my fork of the TextMate LaTeX bundle, you need to remove the old one (maybe just put it somewhere safe in case you want to go back to it) from
~/Library/Application Support/TextMate/Bundles/ (maybe also check in
/Library), and disable or remove the built-in LaTeX bundle. (I, perhaps unwisely, just pulled it out of the .app: right-click on the TextMate application, show package contents, open Contents, Shared Support, and Bundles, wherein is
To install the new bundle, you need to have
git installed. If you don't, there is some information at github about installing git on Mac OS X.
That done, open a Terminal window and type thusly:
cd ~/Library/Application Support/TextMate/Bundles/ git clone git://github.com/paulhagstrom/LaTeX.tmbundle.git
The next time you start TextMate, the new bundle should be active.
Now, back to that paper.
Printing handouts from the T
Once again, I arrive at the T stop just to see the train I needed to get to class on time pulling away. I still need to print my handouts, but I am barely going to be able to be physically there by the time the class is scheduled to start.
What to do?
Well, I have 20 minutes on the T, and my handout files are kept in my Dropbox folder, which means that my handout is actually on my office computer's hard drive. And I have an iPhone on which I have installed iSSH. iSSH is a fabulous app, complete with VNC capability, so I figured: I'll just put my office computer's desktop on my phone, open the handout, and print.
Except something is configured wrong, or I've forgotten the VNC password, something is preventing me from bringing up my office computer's screen on my phone. I can, however, still
ssh in to the command line on that computer.
So: how to print from the command line?
Although there is rarely call to use it, it is relatively straightforward to send things to the printer, and the CUPS printing system installed as part of Mac OS X is smart enough to know what to do with PDF files, and can send options to the printer like: print double-sided, staple, print 2-up, etc. You just use the lp command. Here is the specific command I used.
lp -d printer_name -n 15 -o Collate=True -o Staple=1PLB -o number-up=2 -o sides=two-sided-long-edge ~/Dropbox/.../handout.pdf
Of course, this won't work for everyone's printer setup, one needs to know what the printer's name is, and what options are available. But these are fairly easy to determine, based on things I learned from this page of the CUPS documentation.
If you need to find out what printers your computer knows about, enter
lpstat -p -d at the command line. In the print command I gave above, I pretended that one of the printers was called
printer_name, although really it was named after its IP address on the network. The number 15 I put there after the
-n option is the number of copies to print. The options indicated with
-o are printer-specific options for stapling, printing n-up, etc. You can find what options your printer supports using
lpoptions -p printer_name -l.
So, as long as there is paper in the printer, and there are no forthcoming paper jams, it is possible to make the printer do its thing all on its own, so that I can pick them up when I get there and go to class. Fairly nerdy, but pretty cool. And occasionally practical.