Re: September Data

[Doug Welch <welch@physics.mcmaster.ca>]

Hi Tom,

Perhaps the question should be: "Is there a way to burn CD's that 
doesn't involve your continuous presence at the machine?" If you are 
always writing three copies, you could potentially run these on three 
CD-burners simultaneously (possibly on the same computer, but not 
necessarily). Would buying a CD production unit free up your time?

Cheers,
Doug

tom wrote:

>I know some of you sneer, but September is turning into a record month.  I 
>have burned 300 CDs so far this month.  I keep wondering if there is a better 
>way to archive data, but my research says that CDs are probably the best 
>media for long term storage.
>
>It is a royal pain since it takes several hours just sitting in front of CD 
>burners each day.  It is a real pain since it the interval between changing 
>CDs is not long enough to do much else and if I try I make mistakes.
>
>So far I have taken data 19 out of the first 20 days in September.  This 
>should make a nice sequence for testing things about the data.   All the data 
>is not perfect.  Some stars, for example, grow halos at some periods in the 
>night.  I think it is a question of ground fog and the like.  Still, when I 
>exclude such frames from the data set, the scatter does not improve.  So 
>there is something else going on that is there on clear nights.  
>
>I am not saying fuzzy frames don't have larger errors, I am saying that the 
>frames that look bad contribute less error from their badness than other 
>hidden errors.  If we fix the other error, then possible excluding "bad" 
>frames might make the data better, but not at present.
>
>Tom Droege
>  
>