I have taken a hiatus from astronomy for the past couple of years to delve into my other hobbies: model railroading and computer programming. Also I have been selling my late wife's collection of Beatles memorabilia. The collection included over 1,000 items and they were not cataloged. So I've been cataloging and selling items via the website Selling The Collector's Collection.
I don't have a web site yet for my model railroad but I have made quite a bit of progress on the layout recently. Here are a few pictures of the layout. It is far from complete and I feel pressure to get the trackwork completed as I'm not getting any younger.
I've spent a lot of time programming for the first time since the 1980s. I became intrigued by the very large data sets required by modern games like Clash of Clans. I played around a bit with a spreadsheet building maps & supporting data sets and then I decided I wanted to program a basic game to use the data. So.. I looked around and decided to learn the programming language C++. I had a little familiarity with the C language back in the 80s but hadn't touched it since. I learned enough to get the small game working but I wasn't happy with the user interface, so I switched to the Java language. It's syntax is similar to C but I had to overcome a big learning curve. With Java and the tools provided by the Apache NetBeans Integrated Development Environment, I was able to rewrite the game with a nice windows-like interface. I got it working and it looked pretty good, but I am a poor game designer. No one would want to play the game, but I learned a lot and had fun. I was looking for a new programming challenge.
Since 2018 I have been regularly operating on Art Houston’s Grande
Pacific model railroad. Almost every week, 4-6 people gather at Art's to run trains on his layout. Art uses
JMRI Operations to manage his car movements to the numerous industries around the layout. He typically uses Dan Foltz’s
Manifest Creator to generate train manifests and JMRI to create location switch lists for the operators. Art's system works well and
the operators all enjoy running trains on his layout, which was designed for operations. In the fall of 2020, Art mentioned Manifest
Creators’ dependence on Excel and how Microsoft was now charging an annual fee for Excel as part of their office suite. I told him that
I was looking for a programming project and I would see if I could develop an alternative to Manifest Creator written in Java, a free
program, which is what JMRI is programmed in. The result is Model
Railroad Switch List and Manifest Formatter.
I do plan to get back to astronomy in the future but for now I'm focused on building my model railroad, selling the Beatles' collection, and supporting the users of my computer program.
