Subject: LD+A Magazine Article (Nov95 Issue) Illuminating Bytes Column

From: [email-masked] (Charles Troxell)
Date: 8 Nov 1995 00:16:01 GMT

To: sci.engr.lighting
From: [email-masked] (Charles Troxell)
Subject: LD+A MAGAZINE (Nov95) Illuminating Bytes Article
Organization: Lighting Images Technology, Inc.
Date: Tue, 07 Nov 95 18:45:31 PST
Reply-To: [email-masked]
X-Mailer: WinVN 0.92.6

 SURFING THE NET FOR LIGHTING!!!!!!

Lighting history being made, this article will be published on the INTERNET 
to reach lighting professionals that may not be members of the IESNA at the same
time it’s being printed in LD+A Magazine.  This is the draft copy, and un-edited by
the LD+A Staff.

For some time I have used a commercial on line service for some e-mail and 
really was not all to pleased with it, the software was slick and polished, 
and it was neat to use.  It chugged along at 9600 baud and down loads became
a frequent problem.  Particularly a long one like  the AutoCAD R13 patches.
This was a run for 75 minutes on premium pay forum time. 
Maybe you have been there, about 40 minutes into the down load, the modem 
disconnected.  The service  was not a bad deal, about ten dollars a month 
for about 15 hours connect time on basic services, but nothing much happens
on basic services.

About four months ago I switched to the INTERNET and frankly was not very fond
of it either.  I did it as a "look see" thing so I might report back to the IESNA
Computer Committee.  The fee is a bit steeper, but you're going at 19,200 baud and
things speed up proportionally.
My present service is INFI.NET from down in Tidewater Virginia.   
It’s a local out fit, but it’s growing fast and has links with CBS, several newspapers 
and more than a few subscribers in Virginia, and about 10 other states.  
There are a host of providers both big and small.  Most commercial on line services
now have some sort of INTERNET arrangement.  INFI.NET’s price was right, about 65.00
to sign up which included the software package that would turn you into a real net surfer.
The monthly fee is 15.00 for my connection and that gives me 10 hours on the net and I 
have yet to use all of it up in a month.

CompuServe allows about three hours in their basic package, the browser is another
20.00 download fee. The browser offers you just about everything except the ability
to produce a Home Page or URL(more later). The basic package that was a freebie allowed 
you to use USENET news.  I noted that the news took longer to show up on CompuServe and 
there was less of it as far as lighting was concerned. This shows me that CompuServe was 
merely subscribing to NIST mail.  Clay Belcher,Phd,  IES, at Kansas U monitors the site 
for the mailing list.  You’ll learn that a lot of IES members work the web.  It’s like 
a once a week meeting.  Local Section news is showing up on the sites as well.

Getting on the Net

You will need to become set up for the net.  The amount of hard disk space you will need
depends on what your doing.  If you are down loading a lot of graphic files you will need 
all of the extra space that you can muster.  Base memory, well my machine with 16 meg seems 
to do fine.  But, I will be running 32 meg in another machine in a couple of days and maybe 
I will see some difference in the loading of some of the home pages with a lot of graphics.

You will need a web browser and other utilities.  Windows based software is preferred by me.  
I use Netscape, it was in a nice software package sent with my sign up fee from my service 
provider.  It’s a reduced feature version that allows you to update to the latest version at 
a small fee.  Frankly speaking, I have not updated yet and want to get my feet firmly planted 
before doing so. You will also need a couple of other utilities.  One is going to be FTP so 
you can down load binary files (programs).  These can be anything from graphics files 
to programs.  You also will need a mail package, my provider sent Eudora another reduced 
feature program that can be updated. I also received a host of other utilities such as 
Gopher and Lview and Archie.  One of the most important utilities is WinVN (News).  
This is your USENET news viewer. It allows you to visit the USENET groups.  There are 
over 3400 news groups on the net.  And it’s with this utility that you will find yourself 
reading and working the sci.engr.lighting news group. USENET is  a network of about 4.5 
million users from all walks of life.
The lighting types post questions and seek answers, make contact, get technical help and 
meet one another through the USENET.  You can post an article on USENET and that is how this
months LD+A article was started. Reply’s can come back to you pure e-mail (your eyes only)
or as attachments to the original article.

Looking for Lighting Sites
Moving around the INTERNET can be a little overwhelming for the new user.  If you get on the
browser and tell it to find ‘lighting’ you really may come back with nothing at all.
There are several search engines you can use.  These may or may not get you what you want. 
I hope to take my small experience and put it here to help you navigate cyber space a bit
easier.  

When you become started I’ll tell you right off to go to USENET news.  Read the articles,
if you can help put your two cents worth in.  That’s the reason it's there.  USENET is pure
UNIX to UNIX communication and you can cash in on the experience on you PC or Mac thanks to
programs and decoders such as WinVn (News).  The are certain protocols and etiquette to be
observed.  Such as little letters in addresses such as littrox@richmond,infi.net, my mail
address. You can use caps in the text but not the address.  Many just do away with the 
capitol letters completely.  Anything commercial that you put on the service is considered
a cheap shot and you might be slammed for it.  ALL CAPITAL LETTERS IS CONSIDERED SHOUTING 
and $&*^!~ profanity is done as in this example.  The USENET  will give you more for your
money as far as information swapping goes than anything else.  You can answer an article by
creating another about it or you can get the author’s e-mail address and give a private reply.
I do most of my replies off line to save my time. I log back on and then mail everything at 
once. This site is managed by NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology).  When
you first land on this site, feel free to subscribe and you will get about 6 to 10 pieces of
mail per day.  This saves you some net time rather than reading on line. Download your mail, 
sign off, read it, reply to it off-line.  Then sign back on and send it.

LIGHTING SITES:

Looking for some lighting sites gave me a few hours of use, without too much payback.
I decided that I wanted to do this article to ease the transition for my readers.  I had 
a listing of a few sites such as RPI’s, Lighting Research Institute’s home page.  There was
Phil Morrow’s home page and John Rowe’s and Mike Litman’s,  The Lighting Resource and Greg
Ward’s Radiance site at LBL.  These were pretty well known.  Now how does one find a bunch 
of site’s?  Simple, compose an article on the USENET stating that you need all the lighting 
sites that you can find.  Posting the article took about 10 minutes and half that time for 
it to hit the INTERNET.  Within hours I had incoming mail.  After a couple of days I had 
18 replies and they are still coming in.  Replies from all over the world.  From the United 
Kingdom, Australia, Canada, and the US.  One very useful reply came from Martin Lupton at the 
School of Architecture, in Liverpool, England.  It involved the use of the WebCrawer Search 
engine.  My previous experience with search engines on the INTERNET has not been that rewarding.
But going to the URL’s home page and typing in ‘lighting’ gave me over 100 sites in about two 
or three minutes.  You have to filter them out some, as the search engine is going to take in
the word lighting in the broadest sense.  The program keeps hitting the web and constantly 
updates itself.  I will list some of the better sites at the end of this article and you can 
try them for yourself.

HOME PAGES:

The INTERNET is going commercial, it’s lost its federal backing to a great degree.  I do not 
know who supports the overseas sites, but in this country it continues to grow thanks to a 
host of Universities and Government facilities such as NIST who still run servers.  I believe 
there is a growing activity with web servers being run by commercial services and businesses.  
You may want to post a Home Page, it’s a good form of advertising and you could get a lot of 
hits (readers) for a little money.

Software is available that will take your word processor document and convert it to hyper text 
markup language (HTML).  Also available and not too expensive are html  editors that do a nice 
job.  And for a few dollars you can go out on the net and have a professional job done.  Cost 
for a professional job is not bad.  Cost will vary with the number of pages and the number of 
links that you need.  My local service provider charges ten dollars a month for a three meg 
page.  This is not a huge page and you can take a lot of bytes in a single graphics sandwich.  
I happen to think that it’s best to have someone create your page for you and if the job is 
well done you will get more hits (readers).

If you are a lighting type and want a lighting intensive home page get in touch with 
Phil Morrow at [email-masked], Phil’s home page is one of the better lighting pages 
and he will not only know what your talking about, but will steer you in the right direction.  
There are commercial services out there that will create you a page if you want.  These can 
cost from as little as 35.00 to a 1000.00 each.  I think that about 75.00 will get you what 
you want and need.

Crawling around the web is a lot of fun.  Evenings can get hectic and you will see a lot of 
traffic then.  I usually connect during the day time and meet less home traffic.

Lighting Home Pages abound, and you can look and touch and even get demo’s on lighting and 
programs.  More and more manufacturers are starting to show an interest in HTML, URL sites.  
The web is going commercial.  It’s not all that bad either.  First off you have a connect, 
faster than snail mail (Post Office) and you will find everyone pitching in and helping each 
other.  Occasionally you will see something on the sci.lighting.eng USENET that has nothing 
to do with lighting, this is a SPAM.  Though this USENET location is one of the better.  You 
can bet when this happens someone is going to “SLAM” the originator of that message.

There is an on going effort for the lighting community to opt off for AECNET, which is 
a commercial venture.  I feel that you will see the IES and some others migrate there.  But, 
I will bet that it will not affect the down to earth approach and camaraderie that takes place 
on the pure INTERNET hook up.  Also, I believe you will find that for the biggest bang for your 
buck, you will find it on the net.  I promised some sites for you to look at.  Well here’s a 
list that you can start with.  Neither the IES nor I have checked all of them out, but they 
are up and running at the time of this article.  

This is only a partial listing, as my “column length runneth over.”  There are literally near 
a thousand sites to access, but my “wallet runneth dry.”  

Home Pages:
http://www.mbnet.mb.ca/pmconsult/corner.html. 
http://radsite.lbl.gov/radiance/HOME.html
http://innernet.com/radiance/home.html (Germany)
http://www.equinox.net/equinox/
http://www.i3./LjusArk/la_home.htlm
http://www.webcom.com/~lightscr/
http://www.webcrawler.com (enter lighting as search engine criteria, hold on to your hat,
 start with last 100 listings)
ftp://scorpion.cowan.edu.au/pub/lighting/lx-links.htm (Australia)
http://www.mbnet.mb.ca./pmconsult/corner.html
http://solstice.crest.org/efficiency/iris/inter.light/
http://www.rpi.edu/dept/lrc/links.html (LRC RPI Links to Lighting Industry, and other 
	Home Pages)
http://linnet.ca/pmconsult/corner.html (Another P. Morrow Site with IESNA Canada News,and 
	Manufacturers)
http://lightscape.com/features.html (Lightscapes Software)
http://lightscape.com/mail.html (Lightscapes Inquiries, tech support etc.)
http://w3imagis.imag.fr/images/index.html
http://irisinc.com/inter.light  (this one’s loaded)

E-Mail
[email-masked]
lightsrc@ix,netcom.com
eicbbs.wseo.wa.gov (Washington State Energy BBS)

Oh Yes, you can reach me at [email-masked]
Send your favorite sites and I will try to maintain a listing, which I will post 
once in a while.

SIDEBAR:
For the new Windows 95 user try this one.

Put your arrow (cursor) on the desktop, click the right button. Select “New Folder”.  
Name the folder “and now, the moment you all have been waiting for” (without the quotes””). 
Right click the folder and then click rename it “we proudly present for your viewing pleasure”,
(again with out the quotes).  Right click again and rename it “The Microsoft Windows 95 Product 
Team!” (no quotes). Click to open the folder, and you’ll get eight minutes of music and clouds 
and names including Big Bill himself.

xxx

Charles Troxell, MIES