Re: An Offer You Can't Refuse

["Thomas F. Droege" <droege@fastmail.fm>]

Hi Michael and Rob,

Thinking about it, how would you like to take over tom4 or tom5?  I
would send you an e-mail when the weather was OK, and you could run it
from there.  Actually I could allow a number of observers to take over a
system and run it.  But one at a time.

This might work better than shipping out systems for the time being.  A
number of people could get familiar with what a system could do.  This
would give me a much better idea of who might want to run a system.  It
would also teach a few what operating problems look like.  For example,
last night we had a power failure.  tom1 ran off the end of the ra
drive.  But it was good and a home everything recovered it. 

I see no reason why any of you cannot ssh and run a system from your
location.  I actually do this now.  I run all the systems from my big
screen terminal.  It works fin.  

Tom Droege

On Sat, 22 Apr 2006 09:09:20 -0500, "Michael Sallman"
<msallman@pro-ns.net> said:
> Tom and Rob,
> 
> What I am thinking would be to have 3 files (stars_to_observe, tiles,
> observed). Stars_to_observe would have the positions of any special
> stars ( to observe :-) ). Tiles would have all the tile positions, and
> observed would have a list of all the observations that have been made
> (tile or star with date observed).
> You would:
> 1) Read these files at startup, and create a list of observations for
> that evening.
> 	a) If there is a star accessible at the start of the run, follow it
> until it goes out of range (and write the observation to the observed
> file), else:
> 	b) Pick the first tile that hasn't been observed [or the least recently
> observed one], follow that until:
> 		1) A star becomes accessible (move to that position)
> 		2) The tile goes out of range.
> (and write the observation to the observed file)
> 
> Lather, rinse, repeat. :-)
> 
> You could even have a ranking system for the stars (if 2 are available
> at the same time, the one with the higher ranking is chosen).
> 
> Sound feasible?
> 
> Mike
> 
> P.S. I appreciate all the effort you have put into observing my star,
> but it really doesn't need this kind of time-series observation. It is a
> long period variable, so it shouldn't need more than one observation a
> day (if even that). Thinking about that, you could also probably have a
> field for each star that would signify the type of observation required
> (time-series tracking, or a shorter "snapshot" run of, say 3
> observations). Hmmm.
> 
> Thomas F. Droege wrote:
> > Michael Sallman,
> > 
> > Well, it depends.  You may want to refuse it.  I recall that your star
> > is not available for a while.  tom4 is sitting there and might be used
> > to track your star.  What is needed is modified running code so that
> > whenever your star is within range, tom4 can go and follow it.  I have
> > attached the general operating code.  You can consult with Rob Creager
> > to get information on the commands available.  When your star is not
> > available, I want to pick any field that has not been measured before
> > and follow it for as long as possible.  This is about 3 hours for tom4.
> > 
> > What do you think?
> > 
> > Tom Droege
> 
> 
> 
> 
-- 
  Thomas F. Droege
  droege@fastmail.fm