Steve's favourite topic

Ray..

Unfortunately it is a vicious circle.

The weather plays a major part in submissions being severely delayed / missed because of it's sporadic nature.
by all the laws of Sod, when the weather clears the moon is usually dancing in the sky pulling a big moony at the observatory
and then the system prioritises jobs that it can do whilst the moon is there, such as jobs the other side of the sky
then mr Weather comes back again and delays it all again and the process happens again.
Not to mention the system is then frantically trying to complete certain jobs that are on the cusp of going out of sight because they were delayed previously and thus delaying the current "rising" jobs.

Steve will no doubt elaborate on what I have just said above.

When its smooth and weather plays ball the system flows like water.
When the system is delayed multiple times, it goes into panic mode.

Me, Steve and Pete will have a discussion about this as of course it's an ongoing concern.

Hi Phil, 

Thanks for the full explanation which will help explain to everyone why things can get delayed or missed out. Perhaps it might make it a bit easier to understand the point I'm trying to make by using an analogy. 

Let's imagine during his lunch hour Ray joined the end of a queue at his local bank. For some reason this service, unlike others, was only available on just one day of the week. Now Ray only has so long for his lunch hour so started getting a bit frustrated when some of those ahead of him were taking so long to transact their business with the cashier. The pace then suddenly picked up and soon Ray was the next to be served. :) For some unknown reason the cashier then  summoned forward someone behind Ray. That person Ray recognised as someone from his place of work. What really hurt most though was that Ray knew that they took their lunch break a bit later so didn't need to be in so much of a hurry. :(

So the question is, was Ray served in time, or did he need to come back another week? 

One explanation why that person was called forward ahead of poor Ray, could be that the cashier (algorithm) has a grudge against him, or, is Ray simply suffering from delusions of paranoia. 

Cheers, 

Ray 

I understand what you mean.

However the system will never be a *first come, first served* and is not portayed as such. - It will always do jobs that it can get the most out of. not jobs that it thinks it's only got a small window of opportunity to get a snippet of.

More productivity in the long run.

Like with hourly jobs - some jobs just cannot be done because of events that have taken place. It's unfortunate when this happens.

I have proposed to Steve today a time limit for Syndicate Acquisitions - if it's not complete in that time we wipe it and send any data it had done. - This is something me, Steve and Pete will be discussing soon.

That sounds great Phil, a very welcome addition, so I hope it gets approval from the other guys. 

Best regards, 

Ray 

Just something to consider maybe.

A time limit of 120 days but only purge a job it if some data has been collected. That allows for jobs set up well in advance and still waiting to start. I know this has many complications, so I won't be holding my breath.

Cheers, 

Ray 

Hi Ray, I did speak a little with Phil about this earlier but I am away at the moment so I will answer you when I get back from a long weekend break with Mrs on the Yorkshire coast :)

PS I am sure you wont mind me letting you know that P13 cals are done awaiting uploading....

Steve

Hi Steve,

Thanks for the reply and news on the calibration files. Now that doesn't sound to me much like a break that you're on. I suggest turning your phone off. :)

I'm wondering if this problem of gathering data is related to a problem on pier 2. I've been closely monitoring this recently, and something is going on that a mere novice such as moi, cannot explain.

For the last 3 nights when it has been carrying out imaging pier 2 has spent all its time on a single well placed target, sh2-96 in Cygnus. According to Telescopius this reaches 30° around 00:30, so should be available until around 04:00. Currently this is not affected by the waxing moon. Over the last 3 nights it has gone from 53.3% to 60.0% to 66.7% right now. This is a 15 hour job, so each represents just one hour captured on each of those nights. Nothing is being captured for any of the other jobs according to the job queue. Using the other piers as a control, they have each been collecting far more than an hour of data on every one of those nights.

Something is not right. This might actually explain why that job I originally referred to and is on this pier, never got any time. I'm deleting that job now as the moon has finally written off any last opportunity it had. In terms of my banking analogy, just when I was finally about to be served, the cashier put up a closed sign and went to lunch. Story of my life. :(

Would it be possible upon your return to have a look at pier 2.

Cheers, 

Ray aka pita