PSICAT

Sorry for the spam comments and forum posts. I hadn't realized that it was happening until today. I've disabled comments and the forums since they weren't getting much legitimate use outside of the spammers.

Over the last year or so, development on PSICAT has slowed to a crawl leaving many outstanding bugs and enhancement requests. A recent flurry of feedback from users has made me realize that people are trying to use the software despite the bugs and poor documentation, and has inspired me to kick start a new round of development. I’ve created the dev.psicat.org site to track development progress and provide a mechanism for interested users to guide and shape the development process. So check it out and don’t be shy about providing feedback.

Version 1.1.9 of PSICAT has been released. 1.1.9 fixes issues with Eclipse 3.3.1 and Eclipse 3.3.1.1 and includes some bug fixes from the 2nd season in Antarctica with ANDRILL.

Downloads:

• Windows (26.7 MB)
• Mac (Intel) (26.5 MB)
• Mac (PPC) (26.5 MB)
• Linux (x86) (26.7 MB)
• Linux (x86_64) (26.9 MB)

Version 1.1.0 of PSICAT has been released. 1.1.0 offers an upgrade to Eclipse RCP 3.3.1 and a few of bug fixes. Users are urged to upgrade to this version of PSICAT as it will receive regular updates.

Downloads:

• Windows (26.67 MB)
• Mac (Intel) (26.5 MB)
• Mac (PPC) (26.5 MB)
• Linux (x86) (26.72 MB)
• Linux (x86_64) (26.84 MB)

PSICAT is currently being used in Antarctica for the ANDRILL Southern McMurdo Sound (SMS) drilling expedition. Things have been going well as we worked out most of the bugs last year. The PSICAT source code repository is tracking changes made to the code. The most recent changes have been to add symbols and lithologies to the ANDRILL schemes.

This weekend I finished the initial work of integrating PSICAT and Corelyzer. It is now possible to export the lithological core description from PSICAT and import it into Corelyzer where you can view it next to the core images:

The implementation consists of two components: a plugin for PSICAT and a plugin for Corelyzer. The PSICAT plugin simply exports the lithological core description from PSICAT into a simple, tab-separated file format. The Corelyzer plugin parses this file and renders it into a track inside Corelyzer. This design affords the maximum amount of flexibility because there is no actual dependency on PSICAT. Other tools or databases (dbSEABED? Janus? ICDP's DIS?) can generate a properly formatted TSV file and see the results in Corelyzer. The Corelyzer plugin supports multiple lithology schemes, each of which can define any number of lithologies and associate a color and pattern with each. I've included the USGS lithology scheme that I digitized for use in PSICAT.

The plugin is built against the current Subversion version of Corelyzer, so there's easy way to distribute the plugin for others to play around with. Perhaps Julian can put up a experimental build of Corelyzer that includes the plugin.

The rest of this article will be devoted to describing the technical details behind the plugin, the lithology data format, and the lithology scheme format. I've started a discussion in the Support Forum to track bugs and missing features. Feel free to join the discussion.

Version 1.0.50 of PSICAT has been released. 1.0.50 offers a few minor bug fixes and feature enhancements. If you've previously downloaded PSICAT, you should have received the update automatically.

1.0.50 is the last release in the 1.0.x line of PSICAT. Work is already underway on version 1.1.0 which is focused on ironing out usability bugs and polishing the overall PSICAT experience.

Downloads:

• Windows (22.37 MB)
• Mac (Intel) (22.17 MB)
• Mac (PPC) (22.17 MB)
• Linux (x86) (22.6 MB)
• Linux (x86_64) (22.64 MB)

With the launch of the new website, we've also added online forums. So if you're looking for help or if you have comments, suggestions, or feedback, head on over to the forums and start a new discussion topic!

A screencast is available that shows how to get started using PSICAT. It demonstrates how to create your first project and diagram, and how to draw a simple core description diagram. The screencast is about 13 minutes in length.

PSICAT.mov (36.76 MB)

Last week Dr. Dobbs Journal ran an article about PSICAT. The article does a good job of describing the internals of PSICAT. It's worth checking out if you're interested in how PSICAT works.

• DrDobbs.pdf (158.55 KB)