JamesF

1 minute ago, johninderby said:

Sorry Chris but this is the view just now out of my conservatory door looking at the back garden. 🙂

I'd be complaining about those damn huge trees getting in the way of my view of the sky for a start!

James

8 minutes ago, Astro Noodles said:

Did they give Chris the opportunity to voice his concerns before turning on the floodlights ?

I mean, you could say treat people as you would like to be treated yourself. But, some people are just unreasonable. I suppose the worst that could happen is being told to [expletive deleted] off. Approaching the neighbour first, and then bringing in the council, then the neighbour would know who it was who grassed them up.

I guess I'm just more of a "Here, I brought you some rope.  Look, I'll even tie the noose for you" kind of guy, Noodles.  I absolutely understand that some people might not want to get involved with a neighbour if there was any concern at all that there might be a difficulty though.  People sometimes do stupid stuff and it shouldn't have to be up to their neighbours to explain that to them.  (Or perhaps it could, but then they should also be smart enough to realise they'd got something wrong, which is far from a given.)

James

I have to put up with this.  I think it's dreadful.  It's about a mile away.  I mean, where's the need?

(No, it's not a hot pixel.)

James

1 hour ago, Astro Noodles said:

People who do things without considering how their actions will affect others may not be prepared to be reasonable when challenged. I would go straight to the council myself if I couldn't live with it, without confronting the neighbours directly. I wouldn't feel bad about not approaching the first as they are the ones bein inconsiderate.

I quite understand your point of view, but for me I'd like to be able to think that I gave them the opportunity to resolve the problem (albeit anonymously if necessary) before getting medieval on their donkey.

James

8 minutes ago, johninderby said:

Or how about mirrors angled to shine the light back into their windows.🤔 😁😁😁

I now have visions of a large motorised parabolic mirror burning the words "Turn the lights off" onto their living room wall

James

Just now, johninderby said:

Or how about mirrors angled to shine the light back into their windows.🤔 😁😁😁

I think that's the stage that comes before buying an RPG

James

The other possibility is to hang solar panels on the front of your house.  If they're going to light the place up like it's daytime, you might as well make a bit of cash out of it

James

That's utterly mental.  What on earth are they scared of?  It looks as though there could be a house with a garden that backs onto theirs?  If I lived there I'd be going utterly bananas.

If they're lighting up bedrooms in your house (or those of other neighbours) then it's seriously inconsiderate, regardless of the astronomy situation.  Perhaps a polite note through their door (anonymous if necessary) might be in order, pointing out that their security lighting is almost certain to be considered a statutory nuisance under the Environmental Protection Act 1990 and please would they adjust their insecurity lights so as not to illuminate their neighbours' houses.  Give them a few weeks to sort it, and if they don't then complain to the council until you get a satisfactory resolution.  I'd point out to the council that the neighbours are, in your opinion, potentially putting peoples' health at risk by lighting their bedrooms to a level where it may be difficult to sleep properly, and (if it is the case) that they're unreasonably preventing your enjoyment of your home by making astronomy impractical due to the high light levels.  I'd suggest the health/sleep issue is the stronger case to make because the council won't fancy being sued by someone further down the line who has had their health compromised due to the council's lack of action.  If you can keep some records of when the lights are on and for how long and include that and the above photo with your complaint, all the better.

Could be worth canvassing the opinions of any other affected neighbours, too.

James

I use multiple instances of the terminal window all the time.  I'd have to change distribution if it weren't supported.  There may be some preference that you need to change though, so it opens terminal instances in a new window rather than as tabs, or something like that.

James

1 hour ago, Gina said:

I don't know what LVM is.

Logical Volume Manager.  Basically a system that allows you to modify filesystems (particularly as regards size, though it can do more than that) on the fly.  I guess you could look at it as a means of creating "virtual partitions" (volumes) that you can modify rather than having to change the actual configuration of the disk.  It's a bit of work to get your head around at first, but does the job.  Worth a look if you can foresee the possibility of needing to do that sort of thing though I tend not to use it for home stuff as it feels a bit like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.

James

Can't help with the first two, I'm afraid.  I use FreeCAD for designing things and Cura for slicing at the moment.  You'd probably have to download and reinstall MQTT Explorer but I think it should work ok.

Some recent versions of KStars/Ekos did have a nasty clash where they shipped a later version of libraw than is used by various other applications (GIMP, for example).  I'd hope they've fixed that by now as it was a nasty breakage.

PI we already know about.

I think the "official" version of the Arduino IDE for Mint lags the latest version quite significantly.  I believe I manually installed v1.8 when I last used it.

James

That may have popped up over the top of the other window.  I'd probably change the main option to be a UK-based one and let it get on with things.

James

It just silently closes the window, or doesn't accept you clicking on the "ok" button?

James

If you open the update manager does it give you the option to upgrade in the edit menu at all?

James

11 minutes ago, Gina said:

Reading the information on installing Linux Mint, it doesn't seem possible to upgrade the OS or replace it with the new installation.

I think there may be some missing context there.  I've upgraded Mint versions before now.  I can't recall the specifics for Mint 18, but I think it was possible.

Where you may not be able to do the upgrade is if you boot the installer for a new version off a USB stick, say.  I'm honestly not sure about that.

James

1 minute ago, Gina said:

What I'm not sure of is how installed software will work with a dual boot system.

That would be a bit awkward with a single /home partition, as applications that store their configuration in your home directory might use different file structures meaning that attempting to share the same set of files would get messy.  I'm fairly sure it would break Firefox, for example.

4 minutes ago, Gina said:

I'm guessing a new Linux installation would need all the software re-installed in it.

A completely new installation, yes.  With an upgrade of the existing system some applications might not even notice.

18 minutes ago, Gina said:

I was hoping I could just upgrade my OS to the latest version but it seems this isn't so simple.

I believe most things should pretty much "just work" if you do.  I think you'd just need to update third party applications that do have an OS dependency such as PixInsight after the fact.

James

Upgrading the OS release using the update manager really shouldn't touch /home though.  I've done it quite a few times on laptops without any pain.

James

You could potentially make /home a separate filesystem, but that's possibly not trivial to achieve from where you are right now.

You'd probably need to do something like copy everything from /home to a backup device, delete /home, shrink the root filesystem to a more reasonable size for the OS files, repartition the disk to create a new partition for /home, arrange for the OS to mount it on boot and restore the data from the backup.  You'd need to do it all when directly logged in as the root user too, as obviously deleting /home whilst trying to use it isn't going to go well

James

There's upgrades and there's upgrades...

apt-get update just makes sure the system has the latest information about all updates available for the current OS release

apt-get upgrade will upgrade most stuff based on those files as long as it wouldn't change the version too radically (so you might get a bugfix of the current version of a package, but not a completely new version, for instance)

apt-get dist-upgrade will try to upgrade everything and resolve conflicts where versions have changed.  Generally it's only the kernel needs to be upgraded this way.  There are occasionally other things, but mostly it's the kernel.

None of them will change the current OS release.  For that you need a new set of information for the required OS release (as would be fetched by apt-get update) so the package management systems know what the new versions are and where to find them.  Sorting all that out is probably most easily managed in Mint using the update manager.  There are other ways, but I can't remember what's available on Mint 18.

James

No, that usually just makes sure you have all the updates for your current system.

James

I honestly can't recall which I use.  Probably option 3.  I do it under manual control though, so I can see what's going to get updated before it happens.

James

In the GUI, there's an option in the update manager tool to upgrade the version you're running.  I think you need to open the update manager and perhaps in the edit menu there'll be an item to upgrade the system.

James

Frustratingly, whilst the sky looked very clear as the Moon rose this evening and I was even discussing the possibility of doing some observing with a friend who had stopped by, it is now so cloudy that I can barely tell where the Moon is

James

I had somehow missed this thread thus far so I'm going to have to go back and read through it all now, but I'd just like to say that it gives me such a warm fuzzy feeling to know that I'm not the only person who thinks an 18" rack is a perfectly normal thing to have at home

James

13 minutes ago, PeterW said:

For many simple things OpenSCAD is much quicker

Agreed.  I started with OpenSCAD and found simple stuff was a doddle.  Once I started trying to create more complex designs I moved to FreeCAD and found it very powerful, but the learning curve is undeniably steep.  Perhaps it's not so bad if you have other experience of using these sorts of tools.

I'm almost all GEMs these days so it's not a project I have a use for, but it's certainly very neat and worth the effort given the widefield image posted.  I may be imagining patterns where there are none, but I'd say it's approximately centred on the North America Nebula and the Pelican?

The threading on the camera clamp in the last photo looks very tidy.  I must conclude that the printer is quite nicely set up.

James