Drew Kerman

Operations Director for @KSA_MissionCtrl - Tweets are my personal views of real life outside of but still related to KSP and the KSA. Space! Science! Games!...!

[Drew Kerman @DKerman_KSA]

My summer officially began this past week. Back on the “day job”, doing KSA work whenever I can catch some spare time over the next 3 months

[Drew Kerman @DKerman_KSA]

replacing the imgur galleries in the Ops Summaries on the website with locally-hosted ones, and also making backups on the flickr account, since the images are already there - they just need to be grouped into albums. Easy process overall but still, 179 galleries total

[Drew Kerman @DKerman_KSA]

server migration for KSA wordpress site and Ops Tracker complete. Fairly painless, coulda done it all in a day if I actually knew wtf I was doing! Thankfully chatGPT (free tier even) had solutions for every. single. "problem" (lack of knowledge) I encountered along the way

[Drew Kerman @DKerman_KSA]

site's not gone, just propagating some DNS changes to the new server, assuming I did it right. Klutzing my way through all the hosting setup has been quite the adventure. ChatGPT hasn't steered me wrong yet and I've only had to actually read like 3 reference articles so far

[Drew Kerman @DKerman_KSA]

current setup has everything needed for what the KSA has done so far, but limits me in options for expanding things in the future due to managed hosting. Altho still using a shared hosting *platform* I now have root server access for full control of everything on it

[Drew Kerman @DKerman_KSA]

my Brinkster shared host has been showing its age for years now, finally starting to migrate away - setup a Digital Ocean droplet to move at least my KSA stuff over (WP and Ops Tracker). Sadly not a straight port cause of newer PHP and WP versions that I know will break things

[Drew Kerman @DKerman_KSA]

They also have an M1 engine bell over on the space side of the museum, plus an SR-71, Nighthawk, Saturn V hardware and so much more… spent like 4hrs there 🤩

[Drew Kerman @DKerman_KSA]

well, the road trip didn't go as planned unfortunately thanks to me being unaware of my car's ability to destroy itself with no warning. Now instead of a gradual engine rebuild over the next few years I'm getting a whole new one. Ooof. Full story: https://t.co/sM1cQVYukk

[Drew Kerman @DKerman_KSA]

It’s not all bad tho. I got towed to McMinnville, OR and found out that’s where the Spruce Goose is on permanent display

[Drew Kerman @DKerman_KSA]

AI is a legit force multiplier for hobby dev, shame that they are forcing us out of the market due to the usage overload. I'd let them use my stuff for training in exchange for a discount, but can't justify $40/mo for the high-end model usage. Stuck with Sonnet for now

[Drew Kerman @DKerman_KSA]

made a v13.x.x milestone for the Tracker back at the start of April and filled it with 70+ issues I expected to handle over the next few months with periodic release updates. Yea, Claude made short work of it all in the few spare hours I had from prepping for my road trip 🤯

[Drew Kerman @DKerman_KSA]

caught the @ulalaunch LEO Atlas V from a few miles south of Sandy Hook NJ. Plume visible right after BECO then tracked Centaur until it faded into thick horizon air ~T+14m. Even could see 1st stage a good while leading on the 2nd! (Arcturus circled red) - used Celestron 25x100s

[Drew Kerman @DKerman_KSA]

@senamakel interesting offering. Will keep it under consideration

[Drew Kerman @DKerman_KSA]

the idea of a local AI assistant that can handle the mundane routine stuff of getting things I create ready to put online makes my return to KSA ops all the more feasible as I won't be getting back all the copious free time I used to have anytime in the near future

[Drew Kerman @DKerman_KSA]

the only real user request I ever received for the Ops Tracker was to make the content dynamically resizeable. But having fixed-width lets me maintain better control over the layout. Now at least it makes more use of whatever empty space is available

[Drew Kerman @DKerman_KSA]

super cool being able to stack all the orbits and zoom and pan around them all in 3D. Procession of the orbital movement was very obvious while stacking. The figure now also keeps the orbits in view way more consistently to better see the changes as well https://t.co/zd7ZWM4IYR

[Drew Kerman @DKerman_KSA]

Epicness. 45 days. ~15,000 miles driving. 45 scenic byways. 100+ miles kayaking, 75+ miles hiking, Boeing factory tour, soaking in hot springs, flying over Denali, cruising the length of the AlCan and half of the TransCan. Those are just a few highlights - https://t.co/W9QT4JLeP2

[Drew Kerman @DKerman_KSA]

170 issues closed out for Ops Tracker v13.0.0 - only took 6 years! 😝 These are the highlights, full change log here - https://t.co/1o0usJzzJI - now to switch over to road trip prep & planning...

[Drew Kerman @DKerman_KSA]

I had a good chunk of audience hailing from the UK so I'm making the effort to migrate away from imgur. Ops Tracker is now completely self-hosted for imagery (695 images from imgur). Will replace the imgur Ops Summary albums with flickr album embeds on the website at a later date

[Drew Kerman @DKerman_KSA]

major feature work done, but still a lot of testing to do as I will run thru the entire history & clean up any bugs. Already have 38 logged, but mainly small things to hunt down & deal with. Also need to migrate images away from imgur due to UK ban, which can't be automated. Bah!

[Drew Kerman @DKerman_KSA]

final major Ops Tracker feature is complete & it's something I've wanted to do for years - full ATN catalog display w/interactions!! https://t.co/c5H57BLmBj - you can get the point cloud by selecting the SOI display option, otherwise larger marker spheres aid in click detection

[Drew Kerman @DKerman_KSA]

oh man those Trojan clouds.... and that's quite a belt of NKOs there! Already near edge of performance, in future prob will load scene with just past year of discoveries & let user overload themselves if they want with filter use