Jim Gray is a Microsoft employee who went missing with his boat off of San Francisco last week. An experienced sailor, it’s odd that he hasn’t turned up, even after a lengthy search by the Coast Guard.
Jim basically invented Sky Server, an image retrieval package designed for the huge astronomy project called the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Years ago, my group was part of a proposal to build a NASA satellite, and Jim was part of the team. I didn’t know him personally, but I had sent him emails about what we were planning, and he agreed to be a part of it.
There is quite an effort to find him. You can help! An interactive satellite image search has been set up, and you can help examine images of the ocean to look for telltale signs of his boat. Join in. I’ve done quite a few images myself.
February 4th, 2007 at 10:11 am
For Firefox users, I there is an extension called “Image Zoom” which allows you to enlarge the image right in your browser to get a closer look at things.
February 4th, 2007 at 10:47 am
I think I found him…He has round nerdy glasses, a walking stick and a striped shirt. Oh wait that’s Waldo! How’d he get in there?
February 4th, 2007 at 10:55 am
What resolution are these images? And how large is the yacht? Just trying to get an idea of the relative size…1 pixel, 5?
February 4th, 2007 at 11:04 am
Here’s the information on what to look for: http://www.mturk.com/mturk/preview?groupId=J0XZ58STDWJZ5QY4F9M0
I have to admit, though, that I feel a bit like Hoagland when looking at these…
February 4th, 2007 at 11:56 am
It would sure help to see what the image of a capsized sailboat looked like.
February 4th, 2007 at 12:14 pm
This is hard. My angst is that I make a bad decision. I have to force myself to accept that poor decisions are better than no decision at all. How do so called phsyics live with themselves when they must know they are misleading their victims?
February 4th, 2007 at 12:32 pm
A couple that I marked as worth a look but really that was just playing safe, mostly lots of very empty sea and lots of boxes marked blue. A bit depressing but I have to tell myself that it all helps.
February 4th, 2007 at 12:34 pm
Remember folks:
“Jim’s sailboat will show up as a regular object with sharp edges, white or nearly white, about 10 pixels long and 4 pixels wide in the image.”
February 4th, 2007 at 3:48 pm
For the computer functionally literate only (one step above illiterate) using firefox, when I click on the blue or red squares or the green dots, the screen refreshes but no image appears. There isn’t a tab for the image nor is there a file on the bottom menu bar to open, and if I minimize the screen there is no image behind it.
So what should I try next?
February 4th, 2007 at 3:50 pm
BTW, the blog is back to having an error msg when I posted but with the back arrow and refresh the post is there. This quirk was gone up until last night.
February 4th, 2007 at 3:51 pm
And didn’t happen with that last post.
Your blog software is so weird, Phil.
February 4th, 2007 at 5:36 pm
If you really want to go more in-depth, use photoshop and Find Edges.
It’ll generate more false-positives, but that’s better than outright missing him.
I think that, unfortunately, the best to hope for with standard image analysis (unaided eyes and photoshop) is narrowing down the imagery, but given the amount of data, that’s a huge step.
February 4th, 2007 at 6:58 pm
skeptigirl, you must not click on the colored squares, but a little lower on the pictures to open them in a new tab.
February 5th, 2007 at 6:38 am
i had some trouble getting the Amazon HIT thing to authorize me, but after a couple of tries it worked. so, if you get some kind of “not working right now, try later” message on it, try again immediately.
on that app (or whatever the HIT thing is, i’ve never seen it before), the object you’re looking for would apparently be pretty big, according to their description. each image seems to be a very tiny piece of a very large sattelite shot. individual wave crests are easily visible.
February 5th, 2007 at 7:15 am
also wanted to throw out there that the number of amazon mturk HIT “available images” is falling fast, suggesting that there’s a lot of helpful folks out there checking a lot of images. this would be due, no doubt, to the BA and other conscientious bloggers getting the word out. i would guess that if the level of users helping stays up, the survey should be finished in a matter of hours.
February 5th, 2007 at 7:59 am
Bad news about Jim Gray. He is one of the giants in the fields of databases, especially when it comes to transactions.
February 5th, 2007 at 8:03 pm
OK, could we have some help from other boaties, in the form of tidal charts at the time of the last known position (definite sighting etc.), as this would give the absolute time; any indication of, and ETA at his destination; the capability of his yacht, and the provisions aboard, his nav. gear and reserve fuel if he has emergengy engine; even his health could be important. Also if he had company on board, and any known personality traits that could be helpful in determining his profile.
Sorry to be coldly analytical, or is that anal, but these questions must be asked.
As it is more than 24 hours from the first posted response in this blog, I hope by now he has been located.
I’m on the other side of the Pacific, so if he turns up here, how will I recognise him?
Ivan.
February 6th, 2007 at 2:38 am
Argh me hearty, no doubt he be in Davy Jone’s locker. Or maybe he is making love to the enchantress Circe on her cursed isle. Perhaps he is negotiating the clashing rocks, or Charybdis and Scylla. Aeolis give him winds to come home, Poseidon please release your prisoner.
February 8th, 2007 at 12:39 am
The starting satellite-imagery-search is over for now. Half a million images examined in five days, thanks to everyone who worked on them.
February 10th, 2007 at 4:51 am
Is there any news?