Starship Asterisk*

owlice wrote:. . . snip. . .That seems a dreadful waste of their time, efforts, and talents.

For the record, I like that APOD includes amusing links and am very glad the editors include them. You apparently don't like these. To each his/her own.

I don't object, per se, to the amusing links. But like billsav and Chris Peterson, I would prefer that they remain links off of the APOD site and not on downloaded to my desktop.

If my reading of the FAQs is correct, it appears the editors, Drs Nemiroff and Bonnell, are solely responsible for the text and links contained therein. A respectful request to them to place links in a sequence that always delivers an astronomy related picture to the desktop seems reasonable. They would still have an outlet for their special brand of humor (e.g. horizontally compressed) and keep consumers of their NSF and NASA funded product happy . . . I for one very much appreciate the 99%-astro-related images brought fresh to my desktop every day.

Thanks for the thought provoking interaction, Owlice.

owlice wrote:For the record, I like that APOD includes amusing links and am very glad the editors include them. You apparently don't like these. To each his/her own.

I like the various links, and it doesn't matter to me where the linked material is located. I don't use any sort of third-party tools to load or display APODs, and I don't think there's any reason for the editors to tweak the site to make it more friendly to such tools. Making the tools work correctly is the responsibility of their authors.

The only point I made was that I don't like videos that try to load into my browser. My suggestion was simply that APODs always be static images on the home page. If the actual APOD is a video, I think the static home page image should link to it. The real reason for this is that it makes APOD compatible with pretty much everyone. All browsers handle JPEG images; different browsers, or browser configurations, handle embedded video differently. Some of the older video APODs are practically unviewable now, due to changing standards. In a few years, who knows how current video APODs will display? A static homepage image will always produce a stable starting point.

electronfairy wrote:If my reading of the FAQs is correct, it appears the editors, Drs Nemiroff and Bonnell, are solely responsible for the text and links contained therein. A respectful request to them to place links in a sequence that always delivers an astronomy related picture to the desktop seems reasonable.

APOD itself is not designed to download a picture to your desktop. You're asking the editors to know what people use, what bugs are in those apps, and to fit APOD to those apps and bugs. That does not seem reasonable to me, so we disagree on this point.

Chris, the quote in your post is actually mine, not electronfairy's. I think APOD does a good job of incorporating technology; nothing the editors have done strikes me as bleeding edge. Your point about a stable starting point is a good one, but the web is always a moving target, and video is not an unreasonable technology to expect these days.

I usually have APOD as my home page - but not yesterday.

Yesterday whenever I opened my browser it immediately closed itself. I had to manually change the entry in my prefs.js to have an alternative web page as a home page and then I could open the browser without having it smothered.

owlice wrote: APOD itself is not designed to download a picture to your desktop. You're asking the editors to know what people use, what bugs are in those apps, and to fit APOD to those apps and bugs. That does not seem reasonable to me, so we disagree on this point.

I realize now, Owlice, that you are technically correct. The "automatic backgrounder program" that delivers the APOD to my WinXP desktop is from http://nightskylive.net/software/apod/. However, that link is directly from the official APOD site (http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/lib/about_apod.html). While this may not be an outright endorsement, there is some expectation that the APOD editors are aware that users are automatically updating their Windows desktop with APOD images.

That is why I believe it is reasonable to assume that they would build their descriptions to be compatible with that application. If the issue is as you say, the only additional constraint on editorial freedom would be to position an astronomy related linked .jpg so that is what is picked up by the app.

Would you be willing to ask about it next time you talk to them? A quick search on "hack" on the Asterisk site supports my observation that I am not the only one wanting the desktop software to deliver astronomy-related photos. Thanks for the help.

electronfairy, the editors are aware of the bug, which has only recently come to light. The developer of the app is also aware of the bug.

Navigation in or out of pictures in Apod Archive causes my cpu to saturate at 100% for substantial periods of time. Problem seems most severe under the antwrp entry but also occurs under the apod entry. I'm running Internet Explorer in Windows xp with Norton anti-virus. Computer is a little old Dell Inspiron 700m notepad, which works fine just about everywhere else. Problem only seems to occur in Apod Archive.

owlice wrote:electronfairy, the editors are aware of the bug, which has only recently come to light. The developer of the app is also aware of the bug.

Perfect! I will continue to enjoy the images (today's Serpent Storm on Saturn is another homerun) and patiently await an update. Thanks again for your help.

My APOD Wallpaper is something stupid today!

geckzilla wrote:

telecosmo1 wrote:Is the APOD site being hacked? Today I got a picture of a fist with a pacman ring on it - no sign of Cassini

Today's APOD was a video. Are you using that automatic APOD desktop image program? It grabs the first image it finds which is the Pacman near the end of the description.

owlice wrote:

electronfairy wrote:The movie (and music) are fantastic. I wish I knew why the desktop app seems to select the joke pictures (thin rings= pac man). Seems to happen more often with movies. Twice recently I've had images of audiences with 3-D glasses on. APOD, and their desktop, are very cool. I just wish I could always see the astronomy related images. Any suggestions?

The desktop app can't grab video, so grabs the first picture (.jpg) it can find.

owlice wrote:electronfairy, the editors are aware of the bug, which has only recently come to light. The developer of the app is also aware of the bug.

Woah, woah, woah!