Ad Astra Observatory

Art Morton wrote:
>
> On Apr 26, 2008, at 10:59 PM, Jimbo S. Harris wrote:
>
>> I’m more and more convinced that the Nikon is causing me more

>> headache than it’s worth.
> This does sound frustrating. I spend the time on the dining room
> table working this stuff. At night after work, I am just to tired.
In principle, the thing works fine. But it’s easy to get things out of
synch. I imagine that it would be easier if there were discrete “open
shutter” and “close shutter” commands. I wonder if the Canon will be

different in this regard…
>> The VMware via Mac via VNC is really not working for me. It’s just
>> too damn slow. I don’t think that the Mac is going to last as a
>> long-term astronomy solution.
>
> This is Mac to PC not Mac to Mac, correct?

yes, I’m connecting from my PC laptop to the Mac mini via VNC. The mini
is running VMWare in which WinXP is running. That’s where Max lives.

By the way, do you ever have problems with VMware losing USB ports?
Lately, I’ve had to reboot the Mac a few times, because VMWare will see
my USB hub sometimes but not other times, and when it doesn’t see it, I
only get those devices back by rebooting the Mac. it’s weird.

>> And the VM blue screened on me again tonight, in the middle of a
>> photo run. Apparently, the snapshot that I have is before I put in
>> the Max license key, so now I have to go and spend a few hours
>> figuring out what is broken and needs reinstalling, over the slow-ass
>> network connection.
>
> Just bring the silly thing in the house and work it.

Yes, I got it all back together. But it’s just one of those things
that’s not going to get done at 11:30pm. It needs concentration and the
fact I was already frustrated at it would have just grated on me while I
was doing it. shrug.

I need to go to Fry’s and get a wireless repeater. I think that might help.
>> I’m really hating astronomy right now.

>
> Put everything down, look at the big TV, and play with the Baby Mama
> and the litle one!
(: That’s about what I did.
>> Is there a way to make that stuff save “outside” the VM, into the
>> Mac somewhere?

> That can be done. I have not blown up my VM yet…. So, I save in the
> VM environment. During set up, you can make that transition drive and
> use it to same. I just made my the Mac desktop. It works.
OK, I’ll try it again. I was recently having a problem where WinXP (in
the VM) could write to my “I:” drive (I mapped the VMWare shared folder

to I: within windows), but Max said “that doesn’t appear to be a valid
location”. So I had to write the files locally to the VM. grr. I’m still
working on it.
What would be perfect is being able to have Max write the files
somewhere that was directly accessible from my laptop, like into the
Apple Public Shared Folders place.

…

but I haven’t gotten that working yet. I have a lot of new stuff and
coordinating it all is bumming me out. (:

I got out 2 nights later and produced that M51 with the streaked stars.
Add mount balancing to the list of stuff to be done.

J