[time-nuts] FW: HeyWhatsThat: January 15 Solar Eclipse

Rex rexa at sonic.net
Fri Jan 15 07:50:15 UTC 2010


John,

Thanks for the reply. I expected to hear from someone besides me who was 
also experiencing problems trying to run the link. I wonder if anyone 
can confirm that they are able to use the page successfully from an XP 
machine (or other MS OS), using the Firefox browser. Perhaps someone can 
confirm that this combination is capable or working or not.

I wouldn't expect this machine to be challenged. It is an Intel Quad 
Core processor at 2.8 GHz and has 4 GB of RAM. That is not 
state-of-the-art, but is pretty high performance. I haven't seen any 
other software problems in the ~6 months I've been using this PC.

Today I was wondering if I could find a way to update the GE plug-in in 
Firefox. I couldn't, but I checked for a Firefox update and there was 
one. After updating Firefox, it automatically started loading a new GE 
plug-in, so I should now have the latest versions of Firefox and the 
Google Earth plug-in. When I tried the page again, I got basically the 
same hang result.

The browser window fills with what looks like a very noisy picture of 
several copies of one window. So much video noise that I can't tell what 
the windows are, but they look like empty windows with some kind of 
control or status along the bottom. On the right half of the firefox 
window is one big area of just blank video noise. While this is going 
on, any cursor movement doesn't happen for 5 - 10 sec after I move the 
mouse. I can eventually kill firefox if I gradually move the cursor to 
the upper-right X and click it. If I let this continue for several 
minutes I eventually get a box that says a script is not responding -- 
asks to stop it or continue. If I stop it, I eventually regain control.

I started to try it in IE earlier but didn't let GE load so no 
information gained. Just now I did it again with IE and let it load 
Google Earth. The page does run under IE, so seems the the application 
script has some compatibility with Firefox and the GE plug-in. Surely 
anyone else will see the same problems if they are using Firefox. I 
abhor IE, so I guess I won't be running this tool.

Do you have any connection to the page owner? Can you pass this report on?

-Rex

John Allen wrote:
> Hi Rex, sorry to hear that.  Apparently the page uses a new Google Earth
> plugin (For Firefox).  Google Earth is known for it's demands on hardware,
> particularly Graphics memory and possibly Main Memory.
>
> Please let us know if you find out what is going on.
>
> John Allen K1AE
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: time-nuts-bounces at febo.com [mailto:time-nuts-bounces at febo.com] On
> Behalf Of Rex
> Sent: Thursday, January 14, 2010 2:47 AM
> To: Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement
> Subject: Re: [time-nuts] FW: HeyWhatsThat: January 15 Solar Eclipse
>
> The link doesn't play nice on my machine. The page opens in Firefox 
> browser and shows some simple graphic of the earth with some clickable 
> spots (I think). Then I see a message from my firewall that Google Earth 
> is going out to the internet and all goes weird. The page gets new 
> grainy overlays and the machine essentially freezes. Something is 
> downloading but no joy after several minutes. Just regaining control is 
> a mess because my mouse movements take about 5 seconds to show on the 
> monitor. Two tries with a reboot between and I gave up.
>
> Is it just a problem on my machine, or more common?
>
>
> John Allen wrote:
>   
>> This is worth checking out for the path of Jan 15 eclipse.  
>>
>> John K1AE
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Michael Kosowsky [mailto:mk at heywhatsthat.com] 
>> Sent: Wednesday, January 13, 2010 11:41 PM
>> To: john at pcsupportsolutions.com
>> Subject: HeyWhatsThat: January 15 Solar Eclipse
>>
>>
>>
>> Just finished a simulation of Friday's annular solar
>> eclipse at
>>
>>    http://www.heywhatsthat.com/201001-solar-eclipse.html
>>
>> It uses the Google Earth plugin to show both the eclipse
>> shadow on the Earth and the relative positions of the Moon
>> and the Sun in the sky.
>>
>>
>> Happy New Year,
>> MK
>> twitter.com/heywhatsthat
>>
>>
>> PS. HeyWhatsThat now runs on iPhones and Android phones as
>>     a web app; visit http://m.heywt.com with your phone's
>>     browser.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --------------------------------------------------------------
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>> at http://www.heywhatsthat.com/faq.html
>> --------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>
>>
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