The start of a beginning
GroundPlane.org and TruthTree (“an army of analysts” in design) … it’s about enabling OpenAccess and extending participation!
In communications one of the things that limits the “through-put” of a channel is band-width, quite like “how big is the pipe”. (You can increase the pressure, but widening the pipe has even more effect.)
In radio communications there’s another limit: the “ether” doesn’t just carry the signals we create but also signals from a bazillion-million other sources, everything from lightning crashes to atmospheric static to hum from machinery to hash echoing from the Big Bang itself. So “through-put” is limited by the ratio of that noise to the signal we’re looking for, the signal-to-noise ratio (also signal/noise or SNR).
A resonant antenna works by grabbing more of that signal, passing it to the system while shunting the noise to “ground”, an artificial replacement for the earth. And so the SNR can be vastly improved, not just with a better antenna (increasingly complex) but by providing a better ground. That artificial earth is known as a “ground-plane”.
This system works as a ground-plane. The internet is the cosmic ether. You are not just the source of the signals; you are the antenna and the receiving system.
GroundPlane.org will allow you to maximize your through-put by optimizing SNR!
Why the begging bowl?
A few years back I got hit by a double-whammy; the first messed up my finances, the second was a knock-out that also messed up my health.
I was at Dalhousie University studying cog-psych and criminology (double major) as a mature student. In my 2nd year I was getting high grades and even got research funds for my work on taxonomy. (I rigged up a VRML experiment in ethology, writing an app in VisualBasic5.0 *Gack Ptui!*)
Things were going well … after years as an independent consultant and contractor (computerization and technical documents), coming away from years raising kids in a country home … I was even invited to give the psych faculty a presentation on scientific visualization.
Things were well. I slipped on the icy steps of my front porch and suffered eye damage (minor) and concussion (not at all minor). That knocked me down. I failed a course that spring. Though I got A+ in the redo that summer I failed another that fall and lost my funding.
Having lost most everything I had to move to housing that can only be called humble, at best. A fairly decent room (12ft X 8 feet) in a rough neighborhood. Three months later 2 crack-heads kicked in my door and tried to lay a beating on me. (I think there was a 3rd outside, but I’ll never know.)
Chosing to escape rather than kill them (I was armed with a huge table-leg I’d stashed away), I fell from my second story window when the rope I’d rigged snagged on the window frame and parted.
In 2008 I’m using a 7 year old Toshiba Toughbook. It’s going strong, but 300MHz w/128Meg RAM running Win98SE … the world is closing in on me. (Firefox has been like a friend, but the newest version won’t install.)