Wednesday, April 17, 2024

Arcturus Follows the Bear (all night)

The evening eastern sky on mid-April evenings is dominated by the bright orange star Arcturus, aka Alpha Boötis. This star, located 37 light-years from Earth, is a K0-class red-orange giant with 1.5 times the mass of our
sun, and about 100 times the output of the sun in visible wavelengths. Arcturus is visible from everywhere on Earth except for extreme southern latitudes. For observers in mid-northern latitudes, only Sirius shines brighter. Arcturus’ high proper motion will alter the shape of Boötes over the next few thousand years. Its name derives from the expression “Guardian of the Bear” because it trails Ursa Major, the Big Bear.

(Data courtesy Starry Night)
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Arcturus’ high proper motion will alter the shape of Boötes over
the next few thousand years. Its name derives from the expression “Guardian of the Bear” because it trails Ursa Major, the Big Bear.

Maybe this doesn't affect some BBSes that support UTF-8 but on my CP437-only (DOS) system it doesn't handle some of the characters in these posts.

If you are interested, I use a small Python script to convert UTF-8 text files for CP437 for display on my BBS, included below. I have it in my home directory and call it like: ~/utf8tocp437.py in.txt out.txt

Thanks for posting!


Chris/akacastor


## utf8tocp437.py starts below ##

#!/usr/bin/env python3

import codecs, sys

try:
infile, outfile = sys.argv[1], sys.argv[2]
except IndexError:
sys.stderr.write('usage: %s input_file output_file\n' % sys.argv[0])
sys.exit(1)

textfile = codecs.open(infile, encoding='utf-8').read()
codecs.open(outfile, 'w', encoding='cp437', errors='ignore').write(textfile)

## end utf8tocp437.py ##


--- Maximus 3.01
* Origin: Another Millennium - Canada - another.tel (21:1/162)

Re: UTF8->CP437
By: AKAcastor to Cj on Tue Apr 16 2024 11:42 am

Maybe this doesn't affect some BBSes that support UTF-8 but on my CP437-only (DOS) system it doesn't handle some of the characters in these posts.

Do you see the same issue with the one posted today (dated the 17th for the 18th)?

cj

... For my birthday I got a humidifier and a de-humidifier... I put them in the same room and let them fight it out.
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Re: UTF8->CP437
By: CJ to AKAcastor on Wed Apr 17 2024 06:09 am

... For my birthday I got a humidifier and a de-humidifier... I put them in the same room and let them fight it out.

Steven Wright :) He's one of my favorite comedians.

Nightfox
--- SBBSecho 3.20-Linux
* Origin: Digital Distortion: digdist.synchro.net (21:1/137)

Maybe this doesn't affect some BBSes that support UTF-8 but on my CP437-only (DOS) system it doesn't handle some of the characters in
these posts.

Do you see the same issue with the one posted today
(dated the 17th for the 18th)?

The one posted today looks perfect here, punctuation and all.

Thanks!


Chris/akacastor

--- Maximus 3.01
* Origin: Another Millennium - Canada - another.tel (21:1/162)

AKAcastor wrote to Cj <=-

Maybe this doesn't affect some BBSes that support UTF-8 but on my CP437-only (DOS) system it doesn't handle some of the characters in
these posts.

Do you see the same issue with the one posted today
(dated the 17th for the 18th)?

The one posted today looks perfect here, punctuation and all.

Thanks!

Interesting. Resaved the text files as "DOS" encoding. Didn't even think about the possibility that my editor defaulted to UTF-8. Good to know. I'll keep that in mind!

Chris/akacastor

--- Maximus 3.01
* Origin: Another Millennium - Canada - another.tel (21:1/162)

Chris (CJ)
SysOp - CJ's Place BBS

... So easy, a child could do it. Child sold separately.
=== MultiMail/Linux v0.52
--- SBBSecho 3.14-Linux
* Origin: CJ's Place, Orange City FL > cjsplace.thruhere.net (21:2/156)

Hello CJ,

On Wed, Apr 17 2024 22:43:00 -0500, you wrote:

Do you see the same issue with the one posted today
(dated the 17th for the 18th)?

The one posted today looks perfect here, punctuation and all.

Interesting. Resaved the text files as "DOS" encoding. Didn't even think about the possibility that my editor defaulted to UTF-8. Good to know. I'll
keep that in mind!

If it makes you feel any better, they all looked fine here; including the most recent one. :)

Regards,
Nick

... Take my advice, I don't use it anyway.
--- tin/2.6.3-20231224 ("Banff") (Linux/6.8.5-arch1-1 (x86_64))
* Origin: _thePharcyde distribution system (Wisconsin) (21:1/200)

Accession wrote to CJ <=-

Hello CJ,

On Wed, Apr 17 2024 22:43:00 -0500, you wrote:

Do you see the same issue with the one posted today
(dated the 17th for the 18th)?

The one posted today looks perfect here, punctuation and all.

Interesting. Resaved the text files as "DOS" encoding. Didn't even think about the possibility that my editor defaulted to UTF-8. Good to know.

I'l

l

keep that in mind!

If it makes you feel any better, they all looked fine here; including
the most recent one. :)

Thanks for that Nick!



Chris (CJ)
SysOp - CJ's Place BBS

... MultiMail, the new multi-platform, multi-format offline reader!
=== MultiMail/Linux v0.52
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