Last hour...

All is quiet right now, as evidenced by my typing this entry. It's the last hour of the day and I'm "in the barrel," with earphones on and ready to respond instantly should anyone utter a peep on any of four loops.

I think everyone is too busy getting ready for sleep upstairs, though. The last call I heard from the capcom (capsule communicator, the only person normally allowed to talk to space vehicles, and traditionally staffed by an astronaut) offered to send a video file to the crew, who replied that it could wait until the morning. A few minutes after that, the Russian MCC had its last words for the day, including the obligatory pressure check.

The schedule for tomorrow calls for me to assist the RIO console for yet another simulation, with a similar assignment on Thursday, where I'll be on the other side of the ... whoa! Moscow calling the station... an alarm on board... nothing serious, but worth some attention...

It's probably nothing, but I've got to go...

Cheers...

P.S. It turns out to be nothing...just a sensor that reads high. Everything is within norms.

How big is too big?

The subject is graphics, being downloaded onto a Web page. (And what first crossed your mind? Hmm? But I digress...)

Sitting on the end of a 31 kbps connection, I receive somewhere between 3 and 4 kB per second when there is a tailwind around the data in the phone wire. Therefore, a 15 kB graphic takes 4-5 seconds to load, and a 60 kB graphic takes four times as long.

I've been on the receiving end of some utterly humongous graphics (though not from anyone one my friends list here on LJ that I recall), so I know what kind of a pain it is to suffer through.

Is there any conventional wisdom to cover this? I've got to figure that a 60 kB graphic would be near the maximum end of the scale, no?

Cheers...