Buenos Dias from Texas

[Astro What]

Just swinging by to see what's up here. I rarely participate in general chatter sites, as my site normally keeps me very busy, not only on maintenance and day to day routines but generating content for it.
With life going on - never believe folks that tell you that retired life slows down - I find that frequently there are not enough hours in the day!
But every now and then I may have nuggets of what some would call wisdom (others may call it something else) to impart here.
I've been a XenForo website admin for over a decade, and have played with most of the major scripts and was in IT for years.
I also have a rather dry sense of humor - what little of one I have.
If you are have hit the major admin sites before, you probably know me by my "real" name... Tracy.

 

[Retro]

Welcome to NerdZone, Tracy! I think you'll like it here.

It's true about life filling a void one way or another, great you're keeping busy.

And full disclosure: we know each other from other forums.

Don't worry about having strong opinions here as you won't get the abuse for it that you've seen in other places. That sort of abuse was one of the big reasons that I set up my own forum in fact, as I was so thoroughly sick of it.

 

[Mars]

Welcome Tracy, and I so agree with you about not enough hours in the day. I mean, true, there is always tomorrow, but then tomorrow comes, again with that limited amount of hours....
What you said about 'nuggets of wisdom'? well, that resonates with me as well.
Welcome to NZ, Astro Tracy

 

[Astro What]

Welcome Tracy, and I so agree with you about not enough hours in the day. I mean, true, there is always tomorrow, but then tomorrow comes, again with that limited amount of hours....
What you said about 'nuggets of wisdom'? well, that resonates with me as well.
Welcome to NZ, Astro Tracy

Thanks... gonna be busy again tonight with clear skies and then setting up a VPS for a local medical clinic website.
Hoping to add some more time to this... it was only about 20 minutes of captures due to trees. So if the next 2 nights are nice like forecast, I should be able to get an hour total time in on it.

Got all 3 scope rigs set up with one that I have to do some adjustments on the optical train then try to do captures with it using a DSLR camera.

 

[Astro What]

Surprise.... another XF site that has issues with ImgUr images.
The strange thing.. the other one was also running on their cloud instance. Seems like it is a XF proxy issue when I have found the problems.



is what that link should look like above.

 

[Retro]

Are you sure it's not just a bad link? When I copied the imgur link straight into the browser, I got a 404 error which is consistent with your post.

 

[Astro What]

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Looks like it may be a Imgur crop issue.

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Something weird must be going on again with them.

 

[Astro What]

The crazy thing is.. it shows up fine in the editor... so there is something underlying it. And the only scripts I have the issue on are XenForo



ones. And since I'm banned over there, I can't report it.

 

[Astro What]

Try a different image from there using the insert image function.

Shows up in editor fine... just when the post is saved something with the proxy blocks it. Have you tried bypassing imgur in the proxy setup in the ACP to see if that might resolve it?

And that same link used above works fine on my site.



I do bypass the proxy for imgur as I know they run https and you can't easily replace the image once you upload it.

 

[Retro]

I only had giphy.com on the proxy bypass list - the system default. I've now added imgur.com, so please try again.

As it stands, I get this from Firefox (my daily driver):




And this from Chrome. When I mouse over the blank area, I get "imgur refused to connect".

 

[Astro What]

Looks like it is a proxy issue and not imgur. If you have included imgur in the proxy bypass, that explains the images working in the above posts now.

 

[Retro]

Ok cool. Should I just turn off the proxy completely, maybe? Perhaps pictures will load more slowly, not sure.

What proxy is being used anyway?

 

[Tiffany]

Welcome @Astro What to Nerdzone. Thanks for sharing all of your pictures. You have a great website too.

 

[Astro What]

Ok cool. Should I just turn off the proxy completely, maybe? Perhaps pictures will load more slowly, not sure.

What proxy is being used anyway?

I don't. I keep proxy on, but for sites that I know use HTTPS and that it's harder (if not impossible) to change the linked image, I bypass them. Then the only time it will affect the post is if the user actually deletes his account and images on the hosting service.
The proxy that is being used is the proxy.php script that is included with XenForo. Basically it was originally targeted to prevent mixed content messages when your site was HTTPS and someone linked to an HTTP site image.
It can also be used to prevent someone linking a valid image then later changing that image out to one that is not really "nice'. You can somewhat bypass that by kicking the proxy cache up to a high enough number, or just making it a permanent cache entry.

 

[Retro]

Ok, I've now added the others in your screenshot to that list.

 

[Astro What]

ClearSky and Astrobin can be removed for your use. They are two that are common in my niche, one gives an image for how clear the sky is for a defined location, and Astrobin is just a fantastic astrophotography/astronomy site with a lot of cool features.

 

[Astro What]

Welcome @Astro What to Nerdzone. Thanks for sharing all of your pictures. You have a great website too.

Thanks... it's different than a lot of the other niche related ones for sure.

 

[Geffers]

A big howdy to you from London. I've always been fascinated by the night sky but living in London often struggle to see Venus let alone some of the stars therefore not actually something I have pursued.

The way modern technology maps the heavens now surely may bring others in to the hobby. Provided I have clear skies often best I can see with naked eye is Cassiopeia, Orion's belt, The Plough and the North Star. Plus we often get cloud in UK so can never rely on being able to see any astronomical events.

Geffers

 

[Astro What]

Plus we often get cloud in UK so can never rely on being able to see any astronomical events.

hehehehe... we recently went (here in Texas) through 2 1/2 months of clouds/rain/storms. I think the entire time I was able to get the scopes out 4 or 5 times for partial nights. But that's the hazards of the trade.
I live in a rural area in Bortle 5 skies, but can drive about 20 minutes and be in a Bortle 3 zone, which a lot of people in this hobby would kill for.

 

[Geffers]

Mine is about 8 or maybe 9 so star gazing is not a great option.

Oddly a mere couple of miles from me is the University College London Observatory established in 1925. Of course back then this was a leafy area well outside London proper. Nowadays it is a teaching Observatory as due to light pollution viewing is difficult.

Geffers