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Post by Don B. Cilly on Nov 29, 2019 21:41:36 GMT
So, Dundee University ceased publishing cloud images. NOAA does not publish any that are usable for our purposes. Wisconsin University does... well, at least they publish a ridiculous-resolution one with ugly pink lines all over it - every six hours or so... after selling the good resolution ones to commercial interests. I'll spare you the political considerations. The thing is, though, thanks to some clever people, Molly and Hari Nair foremost, that ridiculous-resolution image can be adapted to our purposes. Especially if you are happy with medium-resolution xplanetFX images to start with. Now, I (definitely ;·) have a KDE-based point of view. And IMHO, you should all do yourselves a favour, ditch Gnome/GTK/whatever-absurdity and get KDE. Like, really.  So, you can start thinking in KDE mode... and these clouds will be just fine. An example of what a KDE xplanetFX wallpaper looks like; Just to explain that a big xplanetFX image isn't really necessary for a good-looking desktop. Especially from a KDE point of view.  |
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Post by Don B. Cilly on Nov 29, 2019 22:02:54 GMT
So, the clouds. More on how to get them working later, but. On the left you have U-Wisconsin clouds sold to Xeric Designs and subscribed - by me - for a fee. On the right you have U-Wisconsin clouds publicly available in "unusable" resolution with pink lines and all... mollyfied  So I would say Molly's efforts are... quite impressive, aren't they?  Now, to get those clouds to work for your xplanetFX, requires a little effort on your part :·). I'll try to guide you through it. Obviously, a minimal knowledge of shell scripts and Linux is required, but really, minimal. It may look complicated, but... I hope it isn't, really.
I'll do that tomorrow though, because it's late - here - and I'd like to do it right  |
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Post by Don B. Cilly on Nov 30, 2019 6:34:04 GMT
So. how do we get those clouds to work for us? It takes a little effort, but once it's done, they will just update by themselves. Open a terminal window. Make sure you have a recent version of imagemagick installed. which convertshould return something like /usr/bin/convertCheck that you have xplanet. Not FX, the original xplanet by Hari Nair  which xplanetshould return something like /usr/bin/xplanetIf you don't, install it. It's needed to convert the images. Actually, it may not be that easy to install.On my 18.04 it wouldn't compile, but you can probably find a binary package for your distro. I found one for mine at ubuntu.pkgs.org/If you don't have a .xplanet directory in your home folder (it's hidden, so have your file manager show hidden files), create it. mkdir ~/.xplanet/mkdir ~/.xplanet/config/
mkdir ~/.xplanet/images/Get this image (it's small and blank, but don't worry) and save it as trans1024x512.png in ~/.xplanet/images/ cp /etc/xplanet/config/* ~/.xplanet/config/
cd ~/.xplanet/config/
sudo chown {YOURUSERNAME}.{YOURGROUPNAME} * ### (assuming you user and group are "bob") : sudo chown bob.bob *
cp default newcloudmap
now, edit newcloudmap. Find the [earth] section and paste this in there: [earth]
"Earth"
color={0, 0, 0}
draw_orbit=false
# black or transparent earth map
#map=black1024x512.png
map=trans1024x512.png
# latest U.Wisc. mollweide
cloud_map=latest_moll.gif
cloud_ssec=true
cloud_gamma=1
cloud_threshold=90
Save the file. You're all set to run a script that will automatically update the cloud images for your xplanetFX. See next post. |
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Post by Don B. Cilly on Nov 30, 2019 6:41:08 GMT
Copy this and save it as, for example, xplanetclouds.sh, in your ~/.xplanetFX directory #!/bin/bash
cd ~/.xplanetFX/
wget https://www.ssec.wisc.edu/data/comp/latest_moll.gif
sleep 2
cp latest_moll.gif ~/.xplanet/images/
xplanet -target earth -config newcloudmap -make_cloud_maps -output newcloud.png -tmpdir ~/.xplanetFX/
convert day_newcloud.png -evaluate Pow 1.0 -blur 0x.1 clouds.jpg
cp ./clouds.jpg ~/.xplanetFX/cache/
cp ./clouds.jpg ~/.xplanetFX/base/
mv clouds.jpg clouds.bak.jpg
mv latest_moll.gif latest_moll_old.gif
Make it executable: chmod +x ~/.xplanetFX/xcloud.shCall it with ~/.xplanetFX/xcloud.sh(in a terminal window) and see if it works. That is, execute xplanetFX, refresh the wallpaper, and... shout at me if there are any problems. Now, we don't want to be calling it manually every so often, do we? So we set up a crontab for it to run every so often, don't we? So we crontab -e
which will open you crontab file in the most obnoxious editor your distro has. At the end of it, type - for example: 10 */2 * * * ~/.xplanetFX/xplanetclouds.shwhich will run the above script every two hours at ten minutes past the hour. [10] is obviously for ten minutes past, if you want a different hourly/daily/etc. setup, look it up. I suggest changing the [10] for a random number, because if trillions of people read this and they start getting clouds at the same exact time, someone will be pissed off  (Shift-Ctrl-V or Shift-Ins should let you paste text there) Ctrl-X should let you exit and ask to save (depending on the editor - it could be :q or something else). So, if this worked, every x hours your system will download the clouds and put the images in the right place, and xplanetFX will update them on the next rendering. Any questions, just ask. |
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Post by Don B. Cilly on Nov 30, 2019 11:20:38 GMT
A word of "caution":
You may have noticed that xplanetFX makes two images in the output/ directory, xplanetFX1.png and xplanetFX2.png
I find this confusing and counterproductive, as the wallpaper changer cycles between the two and one is outdated.
This is particularly bad for testing.
So I have it run this little script after rendering (in Settings > Call a script after rendering)
#!/bin/bash
sleep 4
cd ~/.xplanetFX/output
cp -f $(ls -t *.png | head -1) $(ls -tr *.png | head -1)& exit
which copies the latest image on top of the older one.
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Post by Don B. Cilly on Dec 4, 2019 8:24:59 GMT
Refining conversions: On the left, xerricdesigns clouds. On the right, Wisconsin_moll ones. The first set is with -evaluate Pow 1.1 -blur 0x1 The second set is with -evaluate Pow 1.0 -blur 0x.1  
Good enough for me :·)
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