Maybe I shouldn't have started this blog now, not with everything that's been going on.

Yesterday's entry title, by the way, is from a current local commercial that advertises a new menthol candy and features rappers, newspaper hawkers and other street vendors, and bus conductors. I guess teachers fall under that category also.

So I promised that I would talk about when my thesis advisee showed me his latest program version last Friday. This was after seeing him leaving the research building last Tuesday night, as I was entering to stay overnight, and after no progress report in almost two weeks.

There were a lot of changes to his program. First, atop each unit of time (year, month, day, hour, minute) there were already two buttons: one for increasing the value, another for decreasing. They weren't labeled with arrows, but it was a start.

He showed me the list of meteor showers for the upcoming months. There was a button for each one marked "Radiant" which was supposed to be the point of origin. The text window did not move to the background, so he had to click on the display window for it to be the active one. And there was a small green circle that was supposed to show where the shower would come from. I told him to fix the active window reverting to the display. Also, it would have been better for him to just highlight the whole constellation the shower appears from.

Which brings us to the combination of when some planets are visible, and when a planet is in a certain constellation. There are two pulldown text boxes, for getting the planet and/or zodiac constellation wanted. For example: Mars in Leo. The display changes, but to be able to find out that Leo is there, you have to click on one of the visible stars nearby, which will display the name and the inclusive constellation. Not intuitive and user friendly at all, that, and I'm sure the panel will notice it.

Lastly, he showed me the list of lunar occultations of planets. This, for me, is the most important because it is the easiest and most frequent event to photograph, and gives observers the thrill of seeing two celestial objects through the telescope at the same time. And I was really impressed with the list that resulted. Not that I'm sure they're correct, but at least it's one feature he has over the other astronomy sharewares out there.

It might sound cruel, but now I really think there is a chance his panel will give him a passing grade in his next defense, whether it be at the end of this term or in the next one. I'm sure whatever they will want changed will only be considered as minor revisions next time, and I'll finally have another good mark on my record.

Now there's only the other thesis students to be concerned about.