Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

Kenya 2010

Saturday, October 23rd, 2010

It’s been 22 years since I last worked in Kenya.

As with everywhere, it has changed, and not really for the better.

The area I was in is almost devoid of wildlife, security issues make it difficult to get things done and although Nairobi has come a long way, I think the rest of the country has maybe gone backwards, or at least not moved very far forward.

One of the things that really destroy things for everyone is the NGOs.

One of the projects that we ran across because one of our lines crossed the area, was run by a French NGO. They decided that what the local people needed to improve their lives was crops.

So they, the NGO paid a group to clear a bunch of farm land.

Very nice.

But firstly the people in the area are not farmers, and secondly, last time I checked, crops needed water. And of course the NGO put absolutely no thought into that.

I can just imagine the discussion at the NGO Conference in Paris next year:

Bonjour Monsieur Parasiter, how is your crop program in Kenya going?

Bonjour Monsieur Dégoût, zee crops she is a failure

Mon Dieu, what is the problem? We spent millions (on your salary, nice apartment and all expenses parties)


Well, we clear zee land, and we plants zee seeds, but nothing she grow. It must be zee Oil Company he poison zee land.

Whilst it would be easy to blame the French penchant for doing silly things, the problems run much deeper (not all NGOs are French!). The NGOs have become self-serving businesses these days, starting projects all over the place that are at best poorly thought out, at worst, nothing more than a way for accountant types to maintain a nice lifestyle while appearing to be respectable. Contrary to what a lot of people think, an Oxymoron is not an American with a gas welding set – it is a contradiction in terms, and ‘A respectable accountant’ is a perfect example.

What is even worse of course is that the oil companies get so much bad press. They are not Lily White of course, but 2010 is not 1910 either. The industry and the companies have come a long way in terms of social responsibility, protection of the environment and support of local communities. On this job, almost as much effort was put into Community Development projects as was put into the exploration. And a lot more was achieved than by any of the NGOs in the area. At least the Oil Company engaged the local communities to see what they wanted and needed rather than coming in and pursuing unwanted projects that were unsuitable and unsustainable. I take my hat off to the oil companies, they achieve more in one brief exploration season than all the NGOs put together achieve in years of self serving, unsustainable projects. And that is not just in Kenya. All over Africa and indeed the world, Oil Companies do things that even governments don’t – look at the mine clearance work in Sudan and Egypt to name two. To be totally fair, this is so the exploration can be done, but is of huge, long lasting benefit to the local populace too.

Anyway, enough of NGOs.

I was lucky in that most of the serious problems had been sorted out before I got to crew, so the job ran quite smoothly. It was a BGP crew again, and as I have come to expect from BGP, it was a well run, professional and comfortable operation. Actually one of the best set up and tidiest base camps I have seen in my entire 30+ years in seismic.

It was a 2D job with SN408 and sadly VibPro for the vibrators. The 408 of course performed perfectly, but the VibPro did as it always does. I really hope it gets changed out before we start the next phase of the project. I’ve said it before – IO make the best Vibrators in the world with the AHV-IV, and Sercel make the best acquisition and control electronics with the 408 and 428 + VE432/464. So, IO should stop making electronics and Sercel should stop making Vibs. A partnership would be the best. Doubt we will ever see it though.

Going back in about 3 weeks. Would rather a nice comfortable job based in Surabaya of course, but since that is unlikely, will take what I can get. And the oil company involved is very nice to deal with (you reading this Allan?).

Another Job Finished

Monday, July 12th, 2010

Back home again after another 8 weeks in Oman. Unfortunately the expected extension to the program didn’t happen, so Oman is over for me.

It was pretty uneventful 8 weeks too. The most exciting thing was probably cyclonic storm Phet. At one stage it looked like it was developing into a major cyclone and was going to hit us fair and square. Luckily it turned north just before it hit the coast, and although we experience some high winds and some rain, it didn’t do much damage.

It was severe enough to stop field operations for a couple of days though.

 Apart from that it was a very straightforward couple of months. The crew performed well and deserves credit for a job well done.

 I’m disappointed that there was no extension, but it was a pretty good run though, so not complaining too much.

Do need to find more work though!

Oman and Dates

Wednesday, April 28th, 2010

Back home again after 8 weeks in Oman. Same crew, different block.
This block is completely different to the last – gravel plains and some jebel, but very little that is really exciting.

Operationally parts of it are quite difficult – some very rugged sections.
The crew deserves credit for getting through there without so much as a twisted ankle.
There has been a lot if criticism of BGP over the years, some of it justified, but they have developed and are now at a stage that I would put them up against any of the other major contractors. In many ways they are better.
Their biggest failing is probably technical support, but sadly that is lacking in many companies these days. It’s what happens when accountants get to run companies.

I’m going back early next month, should have around 6 weeks to finish up the job.
After that, who knows?

For those interested, some updates to software:

Uphole2 has had some major fixes:
• On first load of a file that has no Project associated with it, you are now forced to complete the header sections.
• You can now change headers – IE hole names etc.
• The PIK files now contain the depth for that level, so it will be suggested when re-picking
• You can now create a File depth Assignment in Excel and copy/paste into the FDA section
• Print has been added to the Interpretation page
• On the interpretation page:
• Holding down the ALT key while moving cursor over a point show information about the point in the title bar
• Holding down the SHIFT key while clicking on a point changes it to an X and excludes it from calculations
• Holding down the CTRL key while clicking on a point deleted the point from the display and excludes it from calculation

There are still a few things to do –
Report needs to be finalised
There is an issue when changing to different types of down hole tools on the same hole IE going from 5 receivers to 1.
These will be fixed in due course -IE when I get more Upholes to work with.

SMT Analyser has some minor updates
‘Stats Only’ now calculates last month as well as the current month
Fixed an issue with ‘Statistical Comparisons’ crashing

Still need to update for the different possible date formats of the SMT300 which brings me to today’s rant:
Why the hell can’t manufacturers decide on one date format and stick with it?
We have basically 3 formats:
The correct, proper, sensible date format is (CDF) ddmmyyy
The mindless American format (MAF) mmddyyyy (whoever came up with that needs the rough end of a pineapple inserted where it most hurts)
Database format yyyymmddd (for computer use, probably the most sensible)

The problem of course lies with the CDF vs the MAF. How can we tell what the real date is if it is presented as 9-4-2010 or 09/04/2010?
Thinking people would assume it as 9th April 2010, but in America it would be 4th September 2010
This would be manageable if the manufacturers specified what format they are using and stuck with it.
Sensor are one of many that don’t.
It would also be manageable if they identified the date format somewhere in the file header – something like:

DATEFORMAT=MAF

Or

DATEFORMAT=dd-mm-yyyy

That would make life a lot easier for all concerned and me especially.

Of Work, Holidays and Dogs.

Thursday, February 4th, 2010

Back from another 6 weeks in Oman. Nothing really changed, the crew is doing well and the current block should be complete in mid February – just after I return.
The SN428 as expected has hardly missed a beat. The entire crew is happy the Scorpion was retired.

Of more interest was my recent trip to Chiang Mai in northern Thailand.
Would have liked some more time there, but this is a short break, so back to Bangkok it was. Pictures are on the Photo Gallery.
We made it to Doi Inthanon, which besides being rather cold, is the highest point in Thailand at some 2565m above MSL. There are also some nice waterfalls, and of course the Naphaphonphumisiri Chedis built to celebrate the 60th Birthdays of their majesties the King and Queen in 1987 and 1992 respectively.

We also visited the tiger farm, not far from Chiang Mai. Here you can get real close to the tigers. It’s a pity they smell like dogs. Also a pity I couldn’t bring one back to Bangkok to sort out the dog problem in my condo. It is beyond me why people would keep a dog in a condo.
Anyone who is such a depraved social outcast that the only thing they can find that is happy to see them is a shit machine, really should be considering suicide.

Consider a day in the life a dog:

I’m a dog, I’m a dog, you own me, feed me
I’m a dog, I’m a dog, and I’m going to shit everywhere now
I’m a dog, I’m a dog, and I’m going to roll in the shit now so I stink more now
I’m a dog, I’m a dog, and I’m going to yip and yap and yelp to annoy the crap out of all the neighbors now
I’m a dog, I’m a dog, you’re back, you own me, feed me.

Repeat this for day after day, week after week, month after month, even year after year until one day:

I’m a dog, I’m a dog, and I’m going to rip you to pieces now. I’m going to take great bites out of you now. No reason really, I’m a dog, I’m a dog.

A dog has no intelligence, emotions or loyalty. Feed it and hope it doesn’t bite you.
Considering the current concern regarding CO2 emissions, ‘carbon footprints’ and ‘Global Warming’ one area that is ignored is the wasted effort and energy involved in caring for dogs. The best thing really would be to turn them all into fertilizer.
At least then they would be doing something useful.

Oman Again

Monday, December 7th, 2009

Two weeks off after 7 weeks in Oman. Can’t say I am complaining, Oman as always, is a pleasure to work in.
And the crew is BGP again – the same one I have dealt with before in Oman, so lots of friendly faces, good food and very comfortable.
There have been a few changes though; some of the senior staff have received well deserved promotions and are moving up the corporate ladder so to speak.

The biggest change on the crew though was the long overdue retirement of the dreaded Scorpion recording system. It has been replaced by a Sercel 428, which is a joy to work with.
I have been a bit critical of Sercel over the years, but they have done a good job on this system. I just hope they don’t rush another system out any time soon. They certainly don’t need to – there is essentially zero opposition at the moment. That’s not to say there won’t be some time in the future – Geospace’s cableless system looks like it might have some potential for example – but right now Sercel
can sit back and perfect whatever they are working on.

The block is like so many other locations of seismic surveys – boring as hell. This one is mostly dried subkha, with a few sand dunes thrown in to make it awkward. I doubt there are more than 6 trees in the entire block. The only wildlife I saw was a lonely jackrabbit, of all things, right on the edge of the block. No idea what he eats.

It looks like it will run for another couple of months, which suits me. In fact I hope we get an extension!

Khartoum

Friday, September 11th, 2009

Have been in Khartoum for the last couple of weeks assisting one of the oil companies to review upcoming contracts.
Whilst that is not exactly my favorite type of work, it was actually quite pleasant. All the people in the office were very pleasant and helpful and the 2 weeks passed quite quickly.

Although I have passed through Khartoum several times, I have never spent any real time there before. This time at least I got to walk around a bit. The area I was in was the old British Colonial part of Khartoum. There are still a lot of old buildings that can be seen, but sadly most of them are falling into disrepair, and none are open to the public.

One of the things that struck me when wandering about was the creative driving techniques of some of the local people. Having worked in many places over the years, I thought I had seen almost everything when it came to driving, but Khartoum is the only place I have ever seen anyone reading a newspaper when driving! It does have the effect of making you look twice each way when crossing the street.

I had hoped to get to the National Museum when I was there, but unfortunately it was closed every time I went. This was very disappointing to me, and I find it all a bit strange – I would have thought the best time to open a museum was when people could visit. Anyway, on my last day I tried again, and of course it was closed despite it being early afternoon and the sign saying it should be open. One of the guards did allow me to look at one of the outside exhibits though (for a price), which only piques my interest. If I return to Khartoum I will try to get there again. Some pictures in the Photo gallery.

The next job looks like back in Oman.

Another trip to Sudan

Wednesday, July 15th, 2009

Just returned from another 6 weeks in Sudan.
It was certainly a pleasure being back on a Chinese (BGP) crew again.
Good food and accommodation, decent showers, and toilets that flushed properly.
Pretty much everything that was missing on the WG crew in Libya earlier this year.
The job was swamp, helicopter supported, which I was not expecting, having been led to believe I was going to a highland crew to finish off the season, but no complaints.
It was quite interesting, but also quite frustrating, and not just for me.
The crew was caught up in the politics of the area and was unable to work for much of the time I was there due to security issues and compensation disputes with the local people. Security problems pretty much precluded any lengthy visits to the line too, which was a bit hard for me as I like to see and be involved in the day to day happenings.
The crew was excellent, all very friendly and cooperative, although at times, considering the amount of stolen and damaged equipment, I don’t know how they kept their sense of humour.

The helicopter crews were likewise excellent. In fact, the best group of Pilots and ground crew I have ever met. And from two different companies too. The first was a group of Russians with an MI8 (this is one tough helicopter). They were essentially filling in as the Bell 212 that was normally attached to the crew was undergoing engine repairs. Despite the language barrier, these guys did a terrific job and were very helpful to the operation. Once the Bell returned we had an interesting mixture of German, Bosnian and Austrian helicopter crew, who were – and still are – an amazing asset to the operation, and very easy to get on with.
It was a real pleasure working with both teams.

All up, it was a good trip, although at times boring as the crew couldn’t work much of the time. But the crew, both seismic and helicopter made it a well worthwhile trip for me and I hope I get back there some time soon.

Some pictures of the job here:

http://www.seismatters.com/coppermine/thumbnails.php?album=70

Libya

Wednesday, April 8th, 2009

Have been in Libya for the last few weeks.
It was my first time there and I was expecting something like Saudi, but I was pleasantly surprised – the people are well mannered, polite, clean and generally quite good workers. The country is developing slowly, but definitely moving in the right direction. I would not be at all surprised to see Libya become a regional leader sometime in the near future.

The job itself was little more than just another seismic operation in just another barren desert.
What made it interesting was BP’s ISS technique. This is probably the future of exploration seismic for the next few years – high production and very flexible. Unfortunately the acquisition contractor involved was not exactly inspiring, despite having a long, and in their eyes, a glorious past. If they spent half as much time on doing seismic as they do on ‘feel good’ meetings and other cosmetic programs, they could improve both their profits and the quality of their final product.
Not to mention salvaging what is left of their rather battered reputation.

Unfortunately I won’t be going back to Libya, but it was a worthwhile experience nevertheless

Attention Lawrence (Do not call me Larry) H…..

Friday, January 9th, 2009

Lawrence,
This seems like it might be the only way to contact you.
I have been replying to your emails, but I assume you are not getting them
Try contacting me again – if you have another email address, try sending that address.

Hacked

Friday, December 26th, 2008

The few people who do actually visit this site might have noticed a change.
That’s because some poofter hacked the WordPress and Coppermine sections a few days ago.
Instead of spending weeks tracking down the exact scripts that had been changed, I simply reinstalled everything, upgrading to the latest version in the process.
I guess the fact that the site was hacked indicates that someone looks at it.

I have no problem with people exposing weaknesses and problems in software or websites, or to even circumvent unreasonably restrictive licensing systems to protect themselves or their company, but to deface, destroy or manipulate a site to steal is completely unacceptable.
I am of the opinion that malicious hackers deserve a slow and painful death.
It’s time the Namby Pamby politically correct culture of today’s society is examined closely.
The death penalty is appropriate in actually a lot of cases and malicious hacking is one of them.

And I don’t give a shit how old — or young — the offender is. Get rid of them and make the bastards suffer while doing it.

Intel DP35DP and Windows 2000 – October 26, 2008

Wednesday, December 24th, 2008

Another Windows 2000 success. When I arrived home and powered up my main desktop machine, I got popping sounds instead of booting sounds. Hmmm (or thoughts to that effect, starting with F) Must be caps in the power supply I thought, so put a new one in, but the machine would still not boot. Took it all apart and couldn’t see anything burnt, no smell either. I even took the processor out so I could look closely around the CPU socket, but nothing.

Oh well, time to upgrade I guess. I had never been entirely happy with the system anyway – it was a P4 3.6GHz processor in an Intel 915 motherboard, which should have been OK, but the fan that came with the processor was very noisy and things ran hot.

So, off to Seri Centre and buy an Intel DP35DP motherboard, E8400 3GHz Core 2 Duo Processor and 4GB DDR2 Memory.Then came the fun stuff – making it all work with Windows 2000.A quick look at the Intel site shows that they don’t provide ANY drivers for W2K for the DP35DP. Luckily most of the XP drivers work fine under 2000.The only thing I couldn’t get working was the on board sound, so I bought a cheap PCI sound card and installed that.Sound isn’t too important for me, in fact I will never understand the dipshits that use a computer as a sound system.A computer is a machine to WORK with, not play with. If you want fancy sound, buy a stereo. If you want to play games, take up golf or tennis, it’s much healthier.

Anyway, I digress….

There is one pitfall when installing Windows 2000.You must disable the Core Multiplexing in the BIOS before installing.You must also set the hard drive emulation to be IDE – this seems to be default anyway.In my case, I slipstreamed the drivers onto the Windows installation disk, along with a bunch of Windows updates so that I didn’t have to spend the next week updating the updates of Windows updates.This **shouldn’t** be necessary. You should be able to load Windows normally and then install the drivers. After the initial install, perform your updates, install your application softwareand then you can enable core multiplexing. Windows MUST be updated before enabling core multiplexing!

And once again, Windows 2000 triumphs. It’s stable and responsive and has none of the infantile XP or Vista crap.

11 weeks with a Scorpion – October 25, 2008

Wednesday, December 24th, 2008

After 11 painful weeks back home again.

It was nice working Oman again, what wasn’t nice was having to put up with IO’s dreaded Scorpion ‘recording’ system.

They should really drop this thing. It has no future. Hardly a day went by without it crashing at least once, often 3 or 4 times.

The ground electronics are heavy and unreliable, the central recording unit bulky and unreliable and the software of course as mentioned before

seems to have been written by 10 year olds. The log files generated border on worthless – there isn’t one file that can be relied on to be accurate, and IO can’t even spell – see here an extract from the header of one of their APS files:

H00   SPS FORMAT VERSION NUMBER

H01  DESCRIPTION OF SURVEY AREA

H02              DATE OF SURVEY

H03                      CLIENT

H04      GEOPHYSICAL CONTRACTOR

H05      POSITIONING CONTRACTOR

H06       POS. PROC. CONTRACTOR

H07   FIELD COOMPUTER SYSTEM(S)

H08         COORDINATE LOCATION

H09  OFFSET FROM COORDINATE LOC

H10       CLOCK TIME W.R.T. GMT

H11                       SPARE

H12  GEODETIC DATAUM, -SPHEROID Unknown 08 CLARKE 1880

H13                       SPARE

H14  GEODETIC DATAUM PARAMETERS

H15                       SPARE

H16                       SPARE

H17 VERTICAL DATAUM DESCRIPTION MSL-mean sea level

Pretty sad that a technology company can’t even spell computer! Even worse when you consider that this and many other things were pointed out to them nearly a year ago. Sercel can rest easy, the Scorpion is not going to challenge them. What is worrying is IO’s purchase of ARAM. I just hope that the ideas and organisation flow from ARAM to IO and not the reverse.

On the good side though was 6 new AHV-IV vibrators. These are very nice machines, probably the best vibrator on the market today. Miles ahead of Sercel’s Nomad.

If only IO would leave the instrumentation side to Sercel and Sercel leave the mechanical side to IO.

Kazakhstan – June 18, 2008

Wednesday, December 24th, 2008

Just back from 6 weeks in

Kazakhstan.

I worked there with Western about 13 years ago, so I was quite interested in seeing how the place had changed.I wasn’t disappointed.

Kazakhstan has come a long way. From my earlier time there a dozen years ago, I remember

the markets were little more than half a dozen old women sitting around trying to sell a few wilted vegetables.

Now you can get almost anything you want in modern supermarkets. Even imported wine and spirits, even some I can’t buy here!

The South Koreans now have a big presence in the country (and good luck to them). LG and Samsung products are everywhere.

The crew itself was a bit basic. Better than Western was 12 years back though, possibly better than Western is now!. The people were excellent – it was nice working with people who actually understand what Seismic is about. The recording system was a new one on me. It was a JGI GDAPS4. It’s a bit dated these days and it looks like development work has stopped on it. Pity really, it looks like a system that had potential, if only they had kept working on it.Unfortunately it failed twice, which cost the crew around 10 days lost time. The contractor replaced the system with an IO System 2 after the second failure. This was interesting to me too, as the last time I saw an IO2 was in 2000 I think, in Saudi and it was considered well out of date then. It did a pretty fair job in Kazakhstan though, and in fact for a 2D job I would probably prefer it to IO’s Scorpion or System 4. At least it doesn’t crash 5 times a day!  Actually if IO were to purchase JGI, they could learn a lot and it would probably benefit both companies.

For anyone interested, I have some software to analyse GDAPS system tests, and viewers for the GDAPS4 and IO2 systems. Unfortunately IO put no QC information in the shot records (they don’t do much better with the Scorpion either). JGI were a little better, at least they record the box number!.

During the down time, managed a quick trip to Baikonour. I was a bit disappointed there. We couldn’t get to the launch pads or any of the really interesting stuff. Did get to the space museum though, which wasn’t bad, but most of it was models and pictures.There is a Soyuz rocket on display though. Pictures on the Photos page.Baikonour itself was surprisingly run down. I had thought that it would have been a showpiece of modern architecture and living.

Overall I enjoyed my 6 weeks and I hope there is more work for me in

Kazakhstan. It’s an interesting place, with good people and I hope they do well.

Next job is in

Oman, starting early July, up in the north this time.

Upgrading from Vista to Windows 2000 – April 15, 2008

Wednesday, December 24th, 2008

A couple of weeks ago I had to do a trip to Singapore.

Whilst there I decided to buy another Laptop. A Fujitsu 6120 Lifebook this time.

It’s a nice machine – Core Duo Processor, 3GB memory, big hard drive and all the

extras that you come to expect these days.

And of course Vista.

 

I didn’t expect much of Vista, and I sure as hell wasn’t disappointed.

One of my first jobs on getting home was to upgrade to Windows 2000.

Why not XP, you might be wondering.

Well, to my mind, XP was designed for managers, accountants and 15 year old school girls. Here is a typical day in the life of each:

 

The Manager
———–
Waddle into the office, scream at the secretary
Send an email to other managers describing his socks and undies
Complain about the spreadsheet that he ordered redone yesterday without saying what’s wrong with it – coz he doesn’t understand it anyway
Look for porn on the internet until lunch time
Play games for the rest of the day

 

The Accountant
————–
Mince into the office, whimper at the secretary
Send an email describing his socks and undies and state of his bottom to other accountants
Send an email complementing the manager on his choice of socks and undies
Whine at the secretary to redo the spreadsheet that the manager is complaining about, because the accountant doesn’t understand it either – despite creating it in the first place.
Look for porn on the internet until lunch time
Play games for the rest of the day

 

The 15 year old schoolgirl
————————–
Prance off to wherever the hell she is going (she hasn’t a clue)
Send an email to friends describing socks, undies and current breast development
Update her blog with tales of butterflies and fantasies of being gang raped on the way home
Play games for the rest of the day

For these people, XP is the perfect choice.
AN OS for the unthinking public.
Considering all that, Vista makes a lot of sense. You see time moves on:

The Manager has destroyed the company he was supposedly working for, taken the big payout and moved on to destroy another one.

The accountant has a new boyfriend.

The 15 year old schoolgirl is now 19 with 3 sprogs from 3 different fathers.

And what is their OS of choice?

Vista of course! It suits them down to the ground. Another OS for the unthinking Public.

An OS for people who don’t want to do anything useful. An OS that prevents them from doing anything useful. An OS for useless people!

I won’t be part of it, that’s why I have stuck with Windows 2000 and will continue to do so. When it is no longer viable, I will switch to Linux. Or perhaps something else will be along by then. Maybe, just maybe Microsoft will wake up and create a decent OS. But sadly, I think that might be asking just a little too much.

 

Anyway, back to the subject itself.

If anyone else is contemplating upgrading

Vista to Windows 2000 on a 6120, it is not too difficult.

Most of the drivers are available from Fujitsu:

http://support.ts.fujitsu.com/IndexDownload.asp?lng=en&SoftwareGUID=

http://www.fujitsu.com/global/support/products/computing/servers/primergy/drivers/legal-windows.html

I had a bit of a problem with the LAN driver, a better one is available from:

http://www.marvell.com/support.html

They are all listed as XP drivers, but they work OK with 2000.
Download all of them, unzip them and write them to a CD – you will need it later.

The first thing you need to do is add the SATA drivers to your install CD.

Use nLite to do this. nLite is available from:
http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/OS-Enhancements/nLite.shtml
And a write up on how to use it is here:
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Install-Windows-XP-On-SATA-Without-a-Floppy-F6-47807.shtml

Once you have an installation CD with the SATA drivers, just install Windows as normal.

You can then install the rest of the drivers.
The sequence I used for installation was (not that it should make much difference):

Chipset drivers
General IO
Video Drivers
O2 Reader drives (This is the SD card slot)
Touch Pad
Audio – this will install the modem also. Make sure you let it finish, it will ask for extra driver files during installation. Let it look on the driver disk that you made earlier.
Wireless Drivers – there is a message that DPinst32 fails, but that can be ignored
Bluetooth drivers (switch it on first) and as with the Audio, make sure you let it finish completely before rebooting. It can look like it has finished, but it is still installing. Just give it a minute longer.
Fingerprint Reader Drivers
LAN Driver – this is a manual install from device manager
Hotkey Utility
Touch Button Utility
System Extensions Utility
You will then see a couple of unknown devices listed in device manager.

Just do the reinstall driver bit and allow it to search the driver CD.

After that, upgrade Internet Explorer to Version 6 SP1, do the Windows updates – there are over 60 of them, and then there are updates to the updates, so this takes a while – you will need an ADSL line unless you have a recent copy of Autopatcher:

http://www.autopatcher.com

You can then install the wireless applications and you are done.

The only thing I didn’t get working was the built in web camera.

I have contacted Fujitsu on this but so far it has not been resolved.
The system is stable and quite responsive under Windows 2000, and much nicer to use than the horror of Vista.

Oman is over, at least for now – March 9, 2008

Wednesday, December 24th, 2008

Back home again. Just finished a short job in

Oman for an Omani oil company.It quite amazes me how

Oman has changed and opened up since I first worked there in the 80’s. Back then, although some companies were trying to break the PDO/Shell monopoly on the country, they seemed to be fighting a loosing battle. Now there are lots of companies in there and exploration and development has really come on.

Oman is a country that deserves success.

The crew was the same that I had been on for some time – the crew with the dreaded IO System 4. They upgraded however, to an IO Scorpion for the job.We all had high hopes for the Scorpion, after all IO have had plenty of time to get it right.Sadly, although it did do better then the System 4, it still has problems.That it still had problems when recording one line and only 480 channels does not bode well for its future. I was very disappointed in it.IO to their credit though, were receptive to comments I made about it, so who knows, they might get it right yet.In my opinion though, FWIW, they made some fundamental mistakes early on that are probably internally politically difficult for them to remedy.The first is using a Windows OS to run the user interface, and the other was to allow kiddy programmers, all full of MS vim, vigor and brainwashing to write the code for it.It’s got everything from ‘Wizards’ (good for managers, accountants and 15 year old school girls) to graphical ‘flows’ – good for SFA.

It’s time they started to talk to the old time Observers (there are still a few left, believe it or not) as opposed to listening to boys who may well have degrees in playing games, but know nothing about Seismic.

Anyway, enough of that. Time for a beer.

November-December 2007 – December 2, 2007

Tuesday, December 23rd, 2008

Got back home after another 2 months in Oman. Finally get some break – only had 13 days off in 5 months.

Worse than working in Saudi!

One crew (The 2D 408 crew) finished a few days ago, the other crew (IO System 4) has another few months to do. Their production has picked up quite a lot recently, so things are looking better there.

Oman is getting cooler, thankfully. Can’t say I am looking forward to the winter though.

I’m taking almost a month off. Going up to Chiang Mai for a week starting tomorrow.

There should be some more software coming in the next couple of months –

a 408 Viewer and

a IO System 4 viewer

These both allow you to view and analyse SEGD (for 408) and SEGY (for IO4) files.

You can also process similarities and perform various other functions that might be of interest.

More in a few weeks.

Oman – September 23, 2007

Tuesday, December 23rd, 2008

Got back from 6 weeks in Oman a few days ago.

It is a place that sure has changed. I was last there around 20 years ago. There is much more infrastructure and general improvements.

Getting in and out is a lot easier and more friendly too. Unlike some of the neighbouring states, Oman is looking outwards and to the future. And they have a great one too. Oman is a country of great contrasts and has some beautiful places to visit. They are quite welcoming to visitors nowadays too. Well worth a vist if in the region. See  http://www.ktsgroup.org/22001.html for info on tours etc.

As for the work side, well it was Seismic as usual. One BGP crew one Sinopec. Both had good and bad about them, but in general they were quite good to be on. The down side of the BGP crew was that they are using an IO System 4. It’s the first time I have seen and IO4 and I hope the last.  Sercel do not have to worry about their market position if this is their opposition (IMO).

Despite the recording system, the crew tries hard under difficult circumstances.

The Sinopec crew is, shall I say Blessed with a 408.  As can be expected with a 408, it runs smoothly. They do have Nomad Vibs though and all the problems that go with the Nomads. I doubt I will ever be convinced that these things are as good as the M26.

Strange how Sercel can do so well on one front, but totally loose the plot on another.

Going back in a few days. Only 10 days break, but hey, think of the money!

Egypt – July 31, 2007

Tuesday, December 23rd, 2008

Got back from 6 weeks in Egypt for Apache last night.

It was an interesting job, and Apache were great to work for.

It’s refreshing to find someone who is actually interested in the seismic rather than meaningless statistics.

Unfortuneately I didn’t get to do any of the tourist stuff, so no pictures of Pyramids etc. but I will put up some of the operation.

(It’s just another desert)

For anyone interested, VAPS Analyser is available for download. It allows you to graphically examine VAPS files to see how your vibs are going on a day to day basis. Sercel should have done something like this. Follow the link from the Home Page.

Back From Sudan – June 5, 2007

Tuesday, December 23rd, 2008

I was in Sudan for 3 months from Feb through to early May.

To be honest, I was quite dubious about going there – Sudan AND a Chinese crew.

Anyway, I was pleasantly surprised. The crew was BGC, which is an offshoot of BGP, and only operates in Sudan.

They were well organised and very professional. Accomodation and food was excellent – although some people might not agree about the food, but I like rice!.

The crew was an explosives crew, in the south west of Sudan. It is a pretty remote place, with scattered villages and nomads.

Apparently it suffered during the civil war, but I didn’t see any real signs of recent war, and the locals didn’t bother us too much.

The job itself went quite smoothly. We were concerned about the rains towards the end, but managed to finsh just as they hit.

All up it was a pleasant and satisfying job.