2007-Nov 26Monday

[#75] Recent status of 7Timer

2007年11月26日18:19　 7Timer!　

Dear list,

Much of you may have notice the recent unsteadable behaviour of 7Timer, and I have received dozens of queries about this problem so far. As I was off from home for about three weeks, I was unable to do major examinations to see what went wrong. I apologize for your inconveniences.

Today I do some checks and it seems the problem is caused by limited disk spaces. I host a mirror of MPCORB database from Havard and the size of the database kept growing, so the weather data encount I/O errors while transmitting. Now I delete some files and release some space, similar problems may not revisit for maybe… a few months.

This problem will be permanently solved in the major upgrade of 7Timer. I know this upgrade project has been stay over my month for more than half a year, but there are too much things, plans, indeed. I could just apologize to those who had wait so long for the new 7Timer.

I’m now developing some modules of the Lulin Sky Survey pipeline, I have to put it before 7Timer (actually I do so for over half a year, as the pipeline is also a big project) as it’s more scientific valuable. And it’s true that 7Timer is not under manually upholding now, but it’s true again that 7Timer did not appear to have many problems. I’ve devote nearly all of my software developing time to the pipeline of Lulin Sky Survey. The extention of pipeline is expected to be finished around mid-December, and the 7Timer will be under my coverage before 2008, if all things go right. Well, I admitted I’m not good at time prediction. But this time I hope I have get it right through there…

Again, email me if you have any suggestions or problems.

Sincerely,

Quanzhi

P.S. For astronomers, don’t be upset about the repeat-delay of new 7Timer — Remember that C/2007 N3 (Lulin) (my discovery) will be brighten for possibly naked-eye observing in early 2009. Well, you cannot get something for nothing, so I’m happy to exchange the comet with the delay of the new 7Timer project :-p