JamesF

Looking at the pictures of the protruding end of the grub screw again, is it just me who thinks the screw might be cross-threaded?

James

1 minute ago, oymd said:

Can you please answer my other questions? Especially regarding fitting a ZWO EAF to this COARSE side? If the ZWO EAF can go on this side, I can ignore the coarse knob entirely?

I may well be wrong, but I think it's generally considered appropriate to fit a motorised focuser to the coarse side rather than the fine, because the mechanism in the fine side isn't really up to the kind of load a motorised focuser might put through it.

James

Actually, come to think of it you could probably even use a normal right-handed bit, as there appears to be room to drive it all the way through until it falls out.

James

I would be tempted to try to drill the grub screw out using a left-handed drill bit (yes, they are a thing :) of a smaller diameter than the grub screw.  Often the bit will bite into the screw and turn it out rather than drilling all the way through it.

James

3 minutes ago, Alien 13 said:

even Domestos only gets 99.9% 

And that's of the known ones.

James

Ah, right, so you don't want gpsd to run at all?

James

There is, kind of

The problem is that Linux assigns USB serial devices in the order that they connect and when that happens at boot time with more than one device it can be somewhat random, so given two USB serial devices, one may appear as /dev/ttyUSB0 at some point and then /dev/ttyUSB1 after a reboot.

My solution, regardless of Ekos etc., would be to hack the udev rules files to add a symbolic link with a fixed name for each of the clashing devices.  I'm not sure if that's the right way to do it in an Astroberry context though.  StellarMate has some extra "wizard" to help with this, so Astroberry may also have something.

This thread may help a little, though I ended up ranting at INDI a bit

James

25 minutes ago, DaveS said:

I think the file size is around 124 MB .

I agree.  Sixty-one-ish million pixels at two bytes per pixel for 16-bit images, so in the region of 122 million bytes for a mono or raw colour frame.  Or 366MB for a single full colour frame

James

20 minutes ago, andrew s said:

Gardeners World (before its PC phase) used to advocate peeing on your compost heap.

Geoff Hamilton, I bet

James

I feel it would be wrong to allow this moment to pass without drawing attention to a book by Joseph Jenkins called "The Humanure Handbook"

James

1 hour ago, saac said:

I'm in the unlikely camp as well; I think it offers too much of an advantage even when energy is in plentiful supply.

Me too.  In fact I think it would quite possibly have to be a disadvantage for it not to evolve and survive.  Is cannibalism perhaps quite rare for that reason?  Predating on other species might be fine, but predating on your own may have the disadvantages of reducing the size of the gene pool, reducing the number of potential mates and reducing the opportunity for beneficial co-operative behaviour, never mind the possibility of being badly injured by an equally well-armed opponent?  (Of course it  may also have the advantage of reducing the number of potential competitors for prey.)

James

5 minutes ago, JamesF said:

Perhaps "evolutionary pressure" is tantamount to a tautology.  If there is pressure, evolution is the result?

James

I may have meant "oxymoron" rather than "tautology".  It's been a long day and at this point I'm not sure I'm even making sense to myself.

James

11 minutes ago, saac said:

I think the interesting point there Andrew is containment of the condition "no evolutionary pressure".  With evolution resulting from and then exploiting mistakes in the duplication process  I would argue that evolution is inevitable. Then follows predation which as you said would be an advantage.   It would be interesting to find out if there are any biomes where predation is not present; most likely extremophiles  I guess.

Jim 

Perhaps "evolutionary pressure" is tantamount to a tautology.  If there is pressure, evolution is the result?

James

3 minutes ago, ScouseSpaceCadet said:

It's us oldies with not much time and still much to do I feel for...

Well, yes, but the older you get, the more there seems there is to do :)

James

2 minutes ago, Andy ES said:

James

Hang in there mate things are going to get better 

I'm sure they will in the fullness of time.  Mentally it's been tough for me, but it's just one of those things.  For me it's those in their mid to late teens and early twenties that I feel so sorry for.  You can't "get back" the things that should have happened in those years, because the world doesn't stand still for a second at that age.

James

1 minute ago, Basementboy said:

We barely recognise it even when it's carbon-based and oxygen-respiring and genetically very similar to us, like octopuses. We just eat it

They even (so I am led to believe) have a better design of eye than we do.  Unfortunately (for them) they're also quite tasty.

James

In response to the OP, I have reached the point where I feel nothing is guaranteed any more.  People say to me "We're going to do X in July" or somesuch and I can't help thinking "Really?  How can you be so sure?".

I really hope we're through the worst of it as it has messed up many peoples' lives so much, and closer to home it has messed up the lives of my children (as it has for many others in the same boat) in ways that are so deeply unfair and can't ever really be put right, merely given sufficient time to heal.

James

5 minutes ago, Luke said:

Is John imaging now?

Yes.  And in other news, Betelgeuse has gone supernova.

James

Just now, saac said:

And "life" would seem to be programmed to exploit that concentration .  Which make me wonder if predation would be inevitable even in an environment with surfit energy. 

I recall one of Brian Cox's programmes where he introduced the idea of an energy gradient in relation to "life".  For me it was one of those rare moments where my understanding of a subject was completely changed by being shown a different way to look at it -- in a similar way to how reading "The Selfish Gene" completely changed (and expanded) my understanding of evolution.  It's as though someone shows you a view of the world that was previously unknown and you can't ever see things the old way again.

I recall sitting in a biology lesson many, many years ago being taught about some group of attributes that are properties of living things.  Clearly it made a big impression as I struggle to recall what they are now.  Perhaps "seeking out and exploiting sources of low entropy" (or something along those lines) could be one fundamental attribute that underpins all life?

James

10 hours ago, ollypenrice said:

The problem with anthropomorphism is that it is highly insidious. It creeps into our thinking and infects it without our noticing. Implicit throughout the thread are several entirely anthropomorphic assumptions.: All intelligence leads to technology. All intelligence produces 'civilizations.' All intelligence is composed of many individual beings with a need and a desire to communicate between themselves and with others. 

It's possible that our anthropomorphic assumptions are valid because of some cosmic evolutionary principle as yet not known, but it is equally possible that our version of intelligence is atypical.

Bit late to the party on this one, but I think I've come to the conclusion that in this respect anthropomorphism is not just insidious, but in fact probably unavoidable.  Could we recognise "intelligence" if it didn't lead to those effects (such as a technological civilisation) that we understand to be the consequences of intelligence?  Would it mean redefining "intelligence" to the point where it ceased to be a useful term?

I think I'm in the same kind of place when it comes to the search for extra-terrestrial life.  Sure, there may be all sorts of weird and wonderful creatures in the galaxy/universe that aren't carbon-based oxygen-respiring life-forms, but if there are, how would we recognise them?

In many respects I think we can only look for, and recognise, that which is within our understanding of ourselves.  Quite possibly that means we will miss things, but if so how would we know we're not missing things already?  How do we even know we're not sharing our own planet with forms of life/intelligence that we just don't recognise as such?

James

My son actually quite likes the idea of going to work for someone like Space-X.  First he just needs to navigate the mess that is this year's A Levels and then his degree.

James

7 hours ago, dannybgoode said:

How comfortable is comfortable?  I am not an expert in Linux but am pretty comfortable, with guidance at least, doing most things on most OS's via command lines or anything else and would be happy to help if at all I can.  Of course if I would be more of a hinderance I quite understand

Given I am currently confined to quarters anyway I have time on my hands... 

Well, I guess briefly the ideal would be to install a copy of the OS on a different SD card (so whatever I mess about with can't break anything for you and can just be ditched afterwards) and boot the RPi from that with the camera connected and then make whatever arrangements are necessary for me to be able to connect to the RPi using ssh and have root access.  I'd then be able to install whatever packages are required, download the source code and build a version to debug.  For most people that's probably asking quite a lot though and in any case very careful consideration should definitely be required before allowing someone you don't really know to have access to systems on your home network.

James

I was expecting a Hawkman rocketcycle.

James

48 minutes ago, Lockie said:

If it isn't, it only JUST qualifies for double 😁 

If you want an example of a double entendre, I'll give you one :)

James

28 minutes ago, johninderby said:

The little sights are not much use really. I suppose if you didn’t have a finder fitted they would be better than nothing.

I thought they were attachment points for a handle.

James