The state of efforts
Friends:
Some amazing things have been accomplished here. We can all be very proud. We can also continue to be hopeful. Here are some things to know now, if you don’t know already.
- The main public MTurk work has reached its end. The effort has been just phenomenal. In addition to Werner Vogels’ post here, there is a summary note from the MTurk team up at http://www.mturk.com/mturk/preview?groupId=J0XZ58STDWJZ5QY4F9M0 that is well worth seeing.
- As Werner Vogels alluded to, experienced folks from academia and industry will work a high-bandwidth image analysis pipeline in the next day or so to process additional imagery. Multiple independent groups will do this for redundancy (Jim will be proud.) In short, the imagery effort continues. I’m told by the image folks that a lot of knowledge and tools have evolved in the last week that will make them very much more efficient and effective.
- As discussed in recent posts, private planes continue to fly doing visual searches. The Coast Guard continues to be marvelously cooperative. More planes will likely be going out, weather permitting. Two storms are headed this way, though, so let’s hope for a window of good weather, and safe, safe flying.
I also want to talk a bit about how things are evolving here.
This site began as a mechanism to ensure that various urgent overlapping email cc lists didn’t miss people. It has turned into a place for rallying a large-scale grassroots effort. Those efforts have been amazing. There may be more grassroots work to do, and if so we’ll coordinate it here.
One (ironic) outcome of this evolution, though, is that the various smaller groups of folks switched back to email and the like for discussion that didn’t seem suited to this venue. Note that this site is now read by everyone from the news media to Jim’s closest circle of family and friends. That requires some sensitivity on a variety of fronts.
Given that more is happening than appears here, I don’t know whether people have a sense of what’s going on. I can’t update you all on everything, mostly because I can’t muster the energy to sift through everything I’ve seen in the last days, organize it, and make sure it’s presented appropriately. This site was never really intended as a public information service, but I deeply respect the fact that many of you have been devoting significant time and emotional energy into this effort. So I’d like to at least share the big picture.
The most important thing I can tell you is that the various activities seem to have achieved focus in the last 24-48 hours. Strong teams have emerged on most of the concrete tasks we’ve identified. As evidence of that, today I finally felt able to correctly proxy the questions, concerns and offers of help and resources that came through to people who could respond with some authority. These teams are also communicating well — for example, the various search efforts that are being considered in the short term are now informed by imagery and drift models provided by the folks working on those aspects. It’s not clear to me whether any of that sense of focus is visible here, but I think it’s real. I find it very heartening.
If we’re still at this in a few days, I will try to reflect that increased organization into the communication channels here, which will hopefully help people connect more directly.
More as it emerges.
Joe
February 7th, 2007 at 10:39 am
I don’t particularly care if my response is published. It’s more for the folks doing the work. I don’t know Jim personally, but many computing professionals are aware of his work and are naturally interested in the incredible work being done by this team in trying to locate Jim. I hope this site continues at some level, as it is the only way most of us in the field are able to keep up with what is going on, without having it “filtered” by the media. At best the media provides a brief synopsis, and at worst they introduce errors, as you well know.
February 7th, 2007 at 4:13 pm
Is there a log of the dates of all the images that were processed? I had mentioned in another post about getting any data that might be availble for Sun. 1/28.
Thanks
February 8th, 2007 at 3:32 pm
Just a question. The more I read the work going on, and the more I read about the importance of eyes on the ground, I have to ask,
Since it is very dificult to see someone in a raft, and since Tenacious had apparently a radar and a radar reflector, I have to wonder if something happened right at the farralons. Say he was near the back of the boat, maybe felt faint. The boat shifts, he falls over. Or he got in real close and somehow the boat is hit by something. Who knows. But if he got in the water and got ashore, is there any possibility he is actually on one of the islands?
Has someone actually gone to the islands and gone ashore? (instead of wizzing by at 200 mph) I don’t know much details about them. But from photo’s I’ve seen of the islands its not impossible he pulled himself ashore and found some sort of shelter. Just hadn’t seen anything on this site about an actual physical search of the site. Btw a search of the this website might be a nice thing, make it easier to find data here…as it grows. Best wishes everyone.
February 8th, 2007 at 11:10 pm
I think checking the island is a good idea. Have any parts of the boat been found? Could someone have kidnapped Jim and taken the boat? It’s a big boat and if it isn’t sunk it’s somewhere. If you could get satelite pictures of the entire ocean, with all the volunteer’s who are willing to look at grids you could find that boat faster than looking from the ground. If he’s kidnapped, I relish the thought of 1000’s of people searching for the boat and hunting down the kidnappers. My thoughts are with you all.
February 10th, 2007 at 2:53 pm
I would like to suggest a scenario to explain what could have happened to Jim Gray and the Tenacious. On January 28th Jim set out on a voyage to the Farallon Islands a round trip of approximatley 60 miles. Leaving at 8:00 am and returning between 6:30 and 8:00 pm. 60 miles in 10 to 12 hours. Winds were light variable 2 to 4 knots. Anyone sailing would not expect to accomplish a trip of 60 miles in these conditions. Tenacious was most likely under power. Rather than steering for 5 to 6 hours, Jim would have put the boat on auto-pilot with a course of due west. At this point Jim could have experienced a stroke or heart attack. I don’t know how much fuel Tenacious carried but a boat of that size could have 250 gallons or more at approximately 1 gallon per hour, a range of 1,500 miles or more. At this writing, February 10th, 12 days have passed ( 288 hours )
with the auto-pilot correcting for wind and current Jim Gray could be1400 to 1700 miles due west of San Francisco. Tuesday January 30th the Chronicle reported that the coast guard had searched to distance of 78 mile past to Farallon Islands a total of 110 miles. If the above senario is correct, Jim Gray and the Tenacious would have been approximately 432 miles due West of San Francisco Bay.