This site features several of my hobbies, but my main focus is on Weather, and 3D environments (worlds). 
 
Weather has always been a hobby of mine since I was 7 years old. When I got a little older, I remember having a Lionel Weather Instrument set (neon lights on a cardboard display panel) and a plastic wind vane and anemometer that my dad helped me put together and wire. 
  
I also remember having to count how many times the neon light at the center of the display panel flashed in 30 seconds, then had to look on a chart to get the average wind speed.  In addition, a sling psychrometer was used to get the wet bulb reading. Geese... seems like just the other day. 
  
Now I have a Davis Weather Monitor II up on the roof, and am doing pre-recorded as well as live weather broadcasts on the web, and using software like Digital Atmosphere, Virtual Weather Station, Weather Message.  You can see me occasionally on https://livestream.com/jodec

  
Astronomy is another hobby of mine.  I remember having a 2 1/2 inch Refractor Telescope back in late 1972 and looking at the sun with the solar filter that was included.  Also included with this scope was a moon filter, which cut down on the bright glare, especially when the moon was full and very bright.  I could also observe a few planets like Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, some Galaxies such as the Andromeda Galaxy, Globular Clusters, Open Clusters such as the Pleadies, and also the M42 nebula in the constellation Orion. 
 
In 1976, I purchased a Celestron 5 Telescope.  It was a larger (5 inch mirror), and much better than that 2 1/2 inch Refractor.  It had a built-in clock drive, and also an attachment that allowed users to add a camera to it for timed exposures.  I have some photos on this site that can be viewed by clicking on the up button at the top of this page, then on the homepage, click the Astronomy button. 

 
 
Virtual World creation is a relatively new hobby that I got into in April of 2001. 
 
Adobe came out with a beta version of the 3D World Creator.  It was a open public beta and anyone who joined the forum and was interested in being a beta tester simply just downloaded a beta version of the then called "Builder".  When I started with this, I the version I think was Builder43, or possibly Builder38.  At this point, I'm not really sure. 

I found this rather interesting, so I kept up with it, and got to know other people through the forum messages as well as the chat-enabled homeworld that was created by the Adobe Atmosphere Development Team.  We all got to know these guys, and later nicknamed them  "zombies" because they all put in so many hours of dedication and hard work fixing the errors we found, as well as adding new features that were suggested by us, the beta testers.  This helped make a product that would have revolutionized the way businesses could sell products or interact with customers in a 3D Store environment for example. 
 
Unfortunately, the "business world" in some ways were far behind in thinking outside the traditional box as it were, so this software, which many of us thought of as technology ahead of its time, didn't seem to gain interest in the business world. 
 
Any prospective customer for example, could enter a chat-enabled Virtual store, walk through this store, and click on 3 dimensional products in that "store" which would then open up a small browser window describing that product, while the customer could view it from different angles, etc.. 

It did not seem to catch however, so eventually further development of Adobe Atmosphere was discontinued in December of 2004.  Adobe Atmosphere (Builder) is no longer available, nor is the Player Plugin from Adobe's FTP site.  Only the beta testers who received a complimentary copy of Atmosphere 1.0 have a copy of the player on their software disk.  Some of us also have an older version of the player "AtmospherePlayer212.EXE", which actually runs more smoothly in the environments.  There is something wrong with the "AtmospherePlayer216.EXE version.  I continue to use the "212" version which works great! 
 
Other 3D Virtual world developers came up with different software packages.  One such program was called Blink3d by pelicancrossing.  This program was the closest in similarity and ease of use to Atmosphere, but unfortunately Blink3d also met its demise.  Several other programs were rather complicated to learn -- that is, the learning curve was rather steep, and there were very few if any tutorials.
 
I was lucky enough to request and receive the free open source version of the Atmosphere Collaboration Server in July of 2004 before the entire Atmosphere project was discontinued.

I did virtually nothing with the source code at that time because I needed a Linux Operating System to compile the source code and run the program.  
 
I got myself a copy of Redhat Linux and installed it on an older PC in July of 2005.  Installation was successful, but I knew nothing about the Linux Operating System. 
 
My first attempt at installation placed it in terminal mode.  This mode was similar to the old Microsoft DOS system.  At the command prompt I entered "dir" and pressed the enter key.  It gave a directory listing.  This is all I knew about Linux.  I needed to know more commands so I got into my Windows XP computer and did a search on the internet for "Linux Commands".  This gave me some great resources, so I began to teach myself Linux.
 
In the process of experimenting, I messed up the installation, so had to reinstall Linux.  This time I chose the Gnome Desktop option, and the installation was again successful, and I did not have to use the terminal Linux commands.  The desktop was similar to Microsoft Windows environment, and this made things much easier. 
 
My next step was to decide which directory to place the zipped source code file, learn how to unpack the server source code, and learn how to compile it.  I had no idea what to do at this point, so back to Windows XP and another search of the internet for information. 

Found gunzip, tar, and make. Interesting stuff, but what the heck was "tar" or   "make"!   I said to myself "do I have to tar my linux?" (LOL), and  make what?"

I began reading up on this and experimenting and learned lots of methods.  Finally I was able to run the compiler, which was actually quite simple. 

My first attempt at using the 'make' command was rather interesting.  I got screen after screen of errors such as "undefined", "undeclared", "incompatible point type", and lots of other error messages.... I thought to myself -- Yikes, what did I get myself into here... How do I declare, or define, and what the heck is an incompatible pointer type?  Remember... I knew nothing about the C Programming Language either. 

Back to Windows XP internet search... Again, found lots of valuable information, and eventually was able to understand what the C code meant, and to make a very long story shorter, was able to correct most of the errors in several souce code files. 

Finally compiled the source code and even though there were still some minor warnings like -- 'unused variable', the code compiled and I was able to actually run the server. 

Tested this with a "Testworld", and was able to chat with a friend in another location.  It even worked with me using 2 instances ( two open Internet Explorer browsers on my Windows XP and accessing the same world successfully), and literally chat to the other instance, and vice-versa.  The communication interface worked without any issues. 

This was great news, however there were still two functions that never worked during this early time (2005).  The functions were... 1. The server could not retrieve a control file from my website, and 2. The server could not create the Public Worlds Log.  I gave up on these because I had no idea what the program flow was.  There was no flow chart that came with this open source code, so I just used it as I described above. 

I was contacted by Martin Judd, one of the beta testers from the U.K. in September of 2005, and he asked me if I could send him a copy of my version, because in his version, the shared objects function did not work, but in my version, it did work.  Since he had his version from Adobe which was different than mine, and he had already signed the Adobe Licensing Agreement as I also did with Adobe, I sent him a copy of what I had.  As a result, he fixed his copy, and sent me a copy of what he had along with a few other files that I did not have.  These extra files, actually helped me in finally being able to create a webpage that showed a listing of any world that had visitors in it along with the number of visitors.  I had to first fix the routines that were supposed to access the websites and look for and download the control files.  The control files were simple text files that contained a description of the 3D world along with password encrypted code, contact information, category, whether the world was public or private, a headroom number, default avatar, approved avatar, etc.

The server would then create a file with information found in this control file, then read this file and create an internal listing of password codes and other information that was used in creating the world.log file.  The files that I received from Martin the U.K. helped tremendously in enabling me to get the entire server to work.  Interestingly, by sending him a copy of my version, he was able to fix his version and shared that with me, so in short, we both helped each other.

It was not until the summer of 2012, that I began to take another look at the source code.  I was determined to get this program fully functional, and since I now had abit more time to work on it, I was able to correct that "incompatible pointer type" error after finding an example error and solution that actually fit the same problem I had.  The server still could not retrieve the control file, and in fact, the server never ran the code that had this function in it.  Somehow, a line of code seemed to be missing, but I had no idea what was missing.

After a few weeks of frustration trying to figure out what step was supposed to take place, I realized that an area of code to retrieve the control  file from a website was located in another section of that same source code file.  I simply copied that section and place it within the same routine, and lo and behold, the file actually got retrieved!  This was a very good sign, however the server still could not create the "Public Worlds Listing".

At this point, I looked at a file called "lsworld.c" and found a section of code that I recognized as the function that created a temporary file with the information in it that would be displayed in the "Public Worlds Listing".  I knew at this point that I had to place a "jump to" or an appropriate C function, to call that other function in the 'lsWorld.c' file.

Back to Windows XP internet search for "how to call a function".  Found just what I needed, and place the following code in a source file named "HTGlue2.c" at the location that would force it to execute this next function, which should have taken place at this point.

The line of code was simple: "lsWorldUpdate(lss, 0);"  Originally, this code was missing.  That was the reason why the world.log could not be created.

This solved the problem.  The world.log was created, and this file is used as input to one of the perl files (worlds.pl) that I got from Martin in the U.K. and the server was able to create the "Public Worlds Listing" page.

Finaly, the problem was solved after 8 years... but remember, I did not touch this software for about 7 years or so, and I did not work on this every day in 2012.  All in all, I was lucky if I spent between 7 to 11 hours, if that, weekly in getting all of this to work.

I have shared my fully functional version of the server with a few of the former beta testers, and anyone interested may download a free copy.  See the Atmosphere Tutorials Page' under the 'Atmosphere' heading in the Main Menu on the home page.

I have some of those worlds on this website, and they can be accessed by clicking on the Atmosphere link in the main menu link at the top of the page.  You must first install the player plugin if you do not have it already installed on you Windows machine.   Adobe Atmosphere only runs in Windows with Internet Explorer version 6 or greater.  It no longer runs in Firefox with IE Tab installed because the latest version of Firefox no longer supports IETab, however it will work using the free version of "CrazyBrowser".  It has also been known to run on a MAC using Parallels.

I have created some tutorials on this program. There is even one on how to unpack the source, compile it, and run it. I have included a compiled lsServer.lx86 in the packed copy called "AtmosphereServer1.tar.gz".

The tutorials can be found under the Atmosphere link in the main menu on the home page.   Click the 'UP' button at the top of this page.

NOTE:  Be sure to download the Readme_First.PDF as well as the Adobe_Atmosphere_Serversotware.pdf files.   The instructions on how to unpack, compile, etc., and changes that I made as well as information on how I updated some code from http/1.0 to 1.1 are contained in the Readme_First.PDF file.

Some years ago just before Halloween, the old Atmosphere Community from the Beta Testing days, got together for an annual Halloween Party in one of the worlds.  It was great to chat with old friends and brought back great memories of our beta testing days.   The last time several of us got together was on Friday, Saturday and Sunday --   October 29th through 31st. in 2011.  We did not meet in 2012 or 2013 due to time constraints of most people.

I did offer to host a Halloween get together just before Halloween in 2018, and one person showed up.  We had some conversation for a short while, but no one else dropped by, so we both left the environment.  The next day, I checked the access log and found that overnight, someone checked in but no one else was there because it only showed one connection in the log.  These days, we are all quite busy or it could also be that people could not install the plugin using Windows 10, or maybe just lost interest. ???

I purchased a copy of Windows 10 64bit, but must purchase a new hard drive to install it on.  I suspect that using   "CrazyBrowser" if it still exists, on Windows 10 may work -- just a hunch I have.

** UPDATE:   Adobe Atmosphere works on Windows 10!  Installation proceedures for the Player Plugin (for those who have it), is the same as it is on Windows 7.  Also, there is a Microsoft Internet Explorer version 11 that came with my Windows10 Laptop that works fine.   I assume that all Windows 10 Operating Systems has it under Accessories.

CAUTION!!  There was a windows update that took place about a year ago, that changed the Internet Explorer without my permission!  When I tried accessing a world, there was nothing but an small "x" in the upper left hand corner of the browser.  I clicked "Help", then "About" and found that it identified the Internet Explorer as "Microsoft Edge"!!   That was the problem... I could no longer access my worlds on that laptop.

After fuming for a few minutes, I made the decision to remove all the updates, one at a time, until I was able to access my worlds, and Voila... when I checked the "Help", "About", It read "Internet Explorer 11".  At this point, I deactivated all future Windows Updates!  No more Updates for me!   Everything now works and I am able to access all the worlds I have without any problems.

Also Note:  I use FixmeStick and scan my laptop and XP-PRO systems once each month, and have been virus free!

Sadly, the demise of these two great programs makes me wonder if I should ever get involved with any future products like them, because one wonders if they too will meet the same end.