APanel service resumed

APanel service has been back into normal.

Emergency fix of APanel

A serious bug of the new APanel was just discovered, this bug has caused ALL forecast released since July 19 to be UNRELIABLE, and all forecast data has been removed.

I have make emergency fix of the program and things should be normal on the next update (2612Z update, should be available around 16h UT today).

My apologize goes to those who were misguided the bad forecast over the past week, and I will keep an eye if the next runs is okay for use.

About the service problems on July 18-24

Many users found that the 7Timer! service stopped updating since July 18 -- this is due to both the server and scripts upgrading, the service has been resumed on July 22. The server at the National Astronomical Observatories had been replaced with a better (and thus faster) one; while I am pleased to announce that with the precious help from Dr. Johnson Lau from Hong Kong, 7Timer! is now running in distributed-processing mode, which enable us to produce the output with less time. I will continue to revise the script code to further reduce the data process time.

But however I later received emails pointing about that the strange and unaccurate output of APanel, which allow me to discover a function switch from PHP 5.2 to 5.3, the function switch had produced unaccurate APanel output. A fix of the APanel script has been installed and will take effect since the next update (around 5h UTC today).

Thank you again for your support of 7Timer!

Server upgrade, bad news, and good news

You may have notice that 7Timer! has been running with frequent errors since July 11. I have to make apologize for this -- I intent to do a power-on upgrade of the server, however the process took much longer than usual and generate many unexpected problems, so the upgrade is not done yet. After working for two days, I barely got things back into normal - it is running okay at this moment, only with occasionary dataset missing at the Weachart section, but this is only a temporal solution.

To begin with, I am pleased to announce that 7Timer! has received a bond support from the Shanghai Astronomical Observatory, Chinese Academy of Sciences (http://www.astron.ac.cn), they kindly provided an excellent new server, which is intended to run 7Timer! applications ONLY.

However, due to some technical issues, the web application will remain at where it is placed at this moment (at a shared server at National Astronomical Observatories, Beijing). Now, with the generous help from Mr. Johnson Lau, I am working to make both servers working in a distributed ways, which can significantly speed up the process time. I hope the upgrade process can be completely done in a week. By then I will place another announcement here, and before that it is possible for other bad runs to occur.

7Timer! also received assistances from Shanghai Astronomical Observatory through out the year 2010 for new product development, so development of products such as "easyAP", "openAP" is now back on-schedule. I hope easyAP can be available for test by the end of August.

Thanks to all for your support of 7Timer!, your support is the key factor to make the project possible.

Availability of Weachart for 2010 July 11 Solar Eclipse

I am pleased to annouce the availability of Weachart for the total solar eclipse on 2010 July 11. The charts can be achieved on the Weachart product page.

The first charts will be available in the next update (finished at around July 3 18Z).

Site database updated

The USGS site database has been updated to March 2010, now including 2,328,731 entries. Note: the U.S. portion is still of the old version since USGS maintains a seperated database, but I will manage to update it as soon as possible.

APanel and Weachart unavailability at 0306Z/0312Z

Because of the forthcoming test for Weachart upgrade, services for APanel and Weachart are unavailable for 0306Z and 0312Z (Jan. 3, 06Z/12Z). Normal APanel forecast should resume at 0318Z run.

New DIP module reduces process time

Thanks to warm-hearted contributor Mr. Johnson Lau, 7Timer is now enjoying a DIP module with minimum data transfering time. The new DIP module has been put into operation since 0206Z, we expect that the AP forecast will be released no more than 4h30m after the initiallization.

Lau's effort also makes the Weachart extension possible. I'm now working on a major upgrade of Weachart, aiming at a forecasting for more "region" (but possibly with reduced elements) , updates for four times per day, and a revised user interface.

The PFS for 2010 Annular Solar Eclipse will starts on January 5.

2906Z regular update cancelled

A brief note here: since the distributed downloading feature is now under test, the 2906Z (06Z of December 29) update is cancelled, but the 2912Z will resumed. We are now switching to a "distributed downloading mode", which is still under test, and recent updates might be unstable. Stay tuned.

New logo + 7Timer! minor upgrade

I am pleased to annouce the availability of 7Timer!'s new logo as above. The meaning for this new logo is simple, it's in deep blue, which stands for clear sky, a circle means clear, and the clock is at seven, which means "7" and the start of a night.

This new logo is made since 7Timer! has recently become the cooperation partner of China Star Party 2010, which will be held at Yunnan, China in next January.

You may also notice the switch of the looking of APanel. There has been a large number of oversea users reporting the slow speed of loading. Therefore, I simplified the looking in order to raise the speed. The size of the graph is now only 6% as it was before (10K vs 155K), the generation time is also reduced by ~12%. Thanks to John for the suggestion. Please feel free send me comments if you find the upgrade has/hasn't improve your experience.

The precision forecast service for 2010 Annular Solar Eclipse will be available around Jan. 2 or so, the forecast region will be the annularity path in Asia.