Wednesday, December 20, 2017

Old Linux Planetary Processing

In the midst of upgrading my blog and webpages - check here for the full and latest tutorials indices | http://maphilli14.webs.com/software-and-techniques 


Capture

Custom coriander - used for capture in Linux



Lucky Image Stacking

AutoStakkert!2 - for stacking in Linux under

Sharpening 

 
AstraImage - for sharpening / deconvolution in Linux under wine
  •  I typically use Lucy-Richardson Deconvolution with the Exponential setting
  • Document covering all the various experiments I've tried (http://goo.gl/kL7yz)
Derotation 
WinJUPOS - derotation of planetary in Linux under wine


Denoise

Topaz Labs DeNoise - Photoshop plugin used in Linux under wine

Image modification / Post Processing

Photoshop - used for processing in 16-bit when I feel the need - used in Linux under wine
  •  Auto Color
  • Topaz DeNoise
  • Saturation
  • High Pass filter
  • Contrast

 
GIMP - native Linux used for final assembly with info and labels or quick 8-bit processing
 Also be sure to add some of these cool GIMP Plugins:

Monday, December 18, 2017

Michael A. Phillips' 2017 Solar System Bests

All in all a pretty great year for the number and quality of planet photos I imaged.  Here in the northern hemisphere the prime planets of Mars, Jupiter and Saturn are fairly low

Full size on Imgur - https://i.imgur.com/pBM7eje.png

https://i.imgur.com/pBM7eje.png


With labels - https://i.imgur.com/UBCHhVt.png

https://i.imgur.com/UBCHhVt.png


Here's to a great 2017 **FOR ASTRONOMY** and a great 2018.

Friday, July 7, 2017

My Destiny 1 PvP mountain scale

My Destiny 1 PvP mountain scale






Hi, I’m Razor9604 on Xbox and here’s my story of how I went from a 0.72 K/D in year 1 to above 1.0.
First the background.  I’m a happily married, father to four, school aged children.  I used to be a console gamer, back in the ages post Atari 2600.  I had a paper route and got to upgrade to a Sega master system when my brother and I picked a used copy of Phantasy Star.  I played 2, 3 and 4 on the Sega Genesis and was very much hooked on Sci Fi, space travel and astronomy.  Gaming took a back seat to college and work life but I mostly dabbled in PC gaming but nothing very serious.  I had a good coworker who suggested I pick up a discount copy of Halo1 to play some online PvP with him.  It was great fun and LOVED the story line VERY much.  Around that time my wife and I started having kids and it wasn’t until the youngest was coming out of diapers that I said I would get back into gaming.  I very much wanted to finish the Halo story line and picked up and Xbox One for the Master Chief collection.  I filled out my Xbox order with EA sports games NHL and Madden, Call of Duty as well as Destiny.  I never did get Master Chief but something about that live action advertisement with the Led Zeppelin song really caught my eye, they were one of my favorite bands.  Destiny sat on the shelf well into November 2014.  On November 12, I put the game in and called the kids (https://www.bungie.net/en/Legend/PGCR?instanceId=789785154&characterId=2305843009249336792).  That opening cinematic with Mars was SO eye grabbing!  I mean my addiction to astronomy was deep enough that I built my own telescope ( http://i.imgur.com/LIY3ZSP.jpg ) and dream of stepping on Mars all the time!  Look at some of my photos of Mars here http://maphilli14.webs.com/mars – and one of my favorites.

After the opening cinematic the style and theme of Destiny was VERY much in line with Halo, they share a common heritage after all.  I very much enjoyed playing solo, I had no Xbox live but combing through a possible future’s lost past in the Cosmodrome was great fun.  Shooting aliens and getting loot was awesome.  What hooked me the most was the patrol free play.  Being able to roam around with no linear constraints of story telling was quite liberating.  I remember the terror I had stepping on the moon for the first time following that long path in the lunar soil on foot battling over achieving vandals!  What really grabbed me was the descent towards the "Temple of Crota." when between the rocks I noticed the shadows creeping across the rocks.  It was then I looked up to see exactly what the scientific part of me expected to see, a dark, starry sky in the middle part of the lunar day.  That was it, I couldn’t wait to play more, I was VERY hooked!
The upcoming release of the first DLC, “The Dark Below” and lack of Xbox live, locking me out of specific activates, I did it.  I bit the bullet and got Xbox live, joined a clan and began to forge new friendships, diving deep into the Hellmouth for endless wipes on Crota, grinding for gear and sharing life experiences while we waited for the heavy ammo glitch is now deeply a part of gaming Mike.
So now I have a forever level 33 hunter and I let my oldest two create other characters of their liking, as long as one picked a titan and the other a warlock.
Flash forward and I’m a Level 34, kids are doing all the strikes, stories, ranking and PvP on the titan and warlock, those were their characters.  I owned the hunter and they never played it much so all the stats in crucible like my 1st game - http://guardian.gg/en/pgcr/1029713229


Even after I started to get legendary weapons my gun skills were well out matched.  My love for the game carried on.  I did the entire y1 Thorn quest with a blue, void shotgun, which if you recall, dying made progress go backwards.   At the time of the end of Y1, when “The Taken King” was coming out, I had over 500 games on my hunter and poor 0.72 K/D:
Game Number
Date
Type
Map
KDR
KDAR
Kills
Rolling K
Deaths
Rolling D
Assists
Rolling KD
520
9/14/2015 22:09
Mayhem Clash
Frontier
0.38
0.44
3
4107
8
5699
1
0.720652746
521
9/14/2015 22:19
Mayhem Clash
Pantheon
0.64
0.73
7
4114
11
5710
2
0.720490368

I played a lot of Iron Banner and as of the end of Year 3, I still have a lot of Y1 gear in my vault.
When Trials of Osiris came out in Y2, I tried and ended up realizing that I’m just not that good.  I found some sweaty team mates that helped me get all the Y2 trials gear, you know back when it went on rotation not RNG.  Still, trials left my empty and for some strange reason my way of getting better was to dig myself out of a 0.72 K/D and I set a goal as 1.0 or nothing.  My initial projections in a spreadsheet put me at a 1.4 k/d per game and had me a many hundreds of games to make it out the pits.
I have been making charts, like the one above, to help plot my progress.  My routine is this:
  1. Use chrome extension "http://www.destinychecklist.net/"
    1. Go to PvP Tab
    2. Click "PVP History CSV"
    3. Save'd as csv
  1. Open CSV in Excel - We're going to calculate a rolling total of K and D to make a full history of all PvP K/D
    1. Re order to chronological.  It is easier to start from the beginning and add up totals as you more towards today.  To do this, add a column A.
      1. Right click Column A
      2. Insert
      3. Click into cell A2 and type 1
      4. Click into cell A3 and type 2
      5. Now sort inverse cronology.  This will change the current view of most recent at top to the oldest at top.
        1. Click the top leftmost cell boder with the triangle in it, which will highlight the whole spreadsheet
        2. Machine generated alternative text:
        3. Click Data then Sort
        4. Sort by Column A, the one we created in Step 2ai
        5. Add Level X Delete Level 
Column 
Sort by '(Column A) 
Copy Level 
Sort On 
Values 
Options... 
Order 
My data has headers
      1. Now let's calculate the running totals for both K and D.  A running total will give you the cumluative totals over each match you play.
        1. Highlight the Kills Column, which should be G
        2. Scroll the bottom and use this syntax to

KDAR 
ntrol 
sh 
ntrol 
mble 
ntrol 
Map 
KOR 
Blind Wat 
Shores of 
Firebase 
Firebase 
Rusted La 
Kills 
Deaths 
0.33 
0.21 
0.42


  • =SUM($G$2:G2)




So the long and shot of it is, I did it!

All three years of overall K/D by game number from 0.72 to 1.015

Here’s the last two years without all the cruff from Y1 cluttering it up.  

A long, slow, and steady grind up hill.  I ended my hunter’s challenge of going over 1.0 with these stats:
Games = 2,611
Kills = 25,904
Deaths = 25,522

There’s countless clannmates, friends, forums and subreddits that I need to credit along this long way.  You know who you are and you’ll be in my heart and memories as long as I have them.  I love you all and this game and I’ll see you in D2!

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