PixInsight Presentation in Portland, OR in May

[Sean]

I will be giving a one hour PixInsight Presentation at the 2012 Imaging the Sky Conference on May 5, 2012, in Hiillsboro Oregon, just outside the Portland metro area. The conference itself is Saturday and Sunday, May 5-6, and registration is free. However, space is limited, so pre-registration is required. There are a lot of great presentations over the 2 days, so hope to see some of you there.

Full details at http://www.stargazing.net/david/workshop/20120505workshop.html

Sean

[Nocturnal]

Cool, good luck!

[sleshin]

Looks like a great conference. Good luck with your presentation.

Steve

[Juan Conejero]

Hi Sean,

Thank you for your support. Should you need any information or data for your presentation, please let me know if we can help.

[Nocturnal]

Dinner for two at elBulli? A fruit basket?

[Juan Conejero]

Unfortunately, elBulli no longer operates as a restaurant:

http://www.elbulli.com/home.php?lang=en

Given its prices however, this fact is actually irrelevant for me

In case Sean needs a fruit basket we indeed can arrange that :-)

[Nocturnal]

Oh I know elBulli isn't open for business right now

[Sean]

Thanks everyone - I'll report back after the conference.

Juan, a fruit basket certainly isn't necessary, but how about some hints on what PI 2.0 will contain?

Sean

[Nocturnal]

PixInsight hat or t-shirt maybe?

[Juan Conejero]

Hi Sean,

It's too soon to say anything serious about version 2.0 of PixInsight. Too many unknowns. Version 2.0 of PixInsight should be released in 2013, or early 2014 as a maximum.

Software development is getting hard and complex in unusual and weird ways. Operating systems will be transforming our efficient and productive workstations into dumb environments more and more similar to smartphones. Qt 5 (as you probably know PixInsight is based on the Qt framework) will be posing unexpected problems to adapt PixInsight's modular architecture to new GUI constructive paradigms. It's going to be hard, but we'll have to adapt to the new working environments or die. Or become obsolete, which is even worse.

Some general goals for PixInsight 2.0 would be:

* GPU acceleration via OpenCL (perhaps we'll see some first attempts to do this in version 1.8 or 1.9).

* Completely redesigned workspace with more dynamic features (Qt 5 will play a key role here).

* Complete platform independence. PixInsight should look *exactly* the same on all supported platforms. Actually, we have already achieved most of this goal with version 1.7.

* Better JavaScript runtime with an integrated debugger.

* Integration of the Python scripting language.

* Implementations of new multiscale processing techniques: curvelets, shapelets, hybrid morphological-wavelet transforms (this is also a goal for the last 1.x versions).

Of course, I don't promise anything

[Nocturnal]

I don't know about Macs but Windows 8 machines will look and feel similar to W7 which in turn is still familiar for W95 users. Metro can be disabled without much trouble afterall. I doubt Linux desktops will have anything like Metro but if they do it will be optional.

Python? Not as nice as Ruby but I sure prefer it over javascript

[Juan Conejero]

Metro can be disabled without much trouble afterall.

Disable is the problem. Or better, a first sign of the problem. We'll have to start disabling major new system features to turn it back into something that *works*. The problem is: Metro is inefficient. GNOME 3 is inefficient (and yes, it is essentially the same paradigm as Metro). Good Old Desktops are efficient and productive. New software has to adapt to inefficient environments or become obsolete, sooner or later...

[Juan Conejero]

Python? Not as nice as Ruby but I sure prefer it over javascript

I do prefer JavaScript, actually

[Nocturnal]

My point is that people who are enlightened enough to use PI will know how to disable Metro. I am not worried about this development from a PI or even a general workstation perspective. Corporate IT will not allow default Metro installs so their interests are in line with ours. MS will make it easy to disable Metro for old dogs like us who are perfectly happy with keyboards and mic thank you very much

If not then W7 will become the new XP and we'll still be chatting about it 10 years from now.

Let's not play Chicken Little. Metro is of no consequence to PI. You will not be the only software vendor who's wondering how his 'traditional' software is going to fit. Do you really think MS is going to p1ss off all AutoCAD users? All Photoshoppers? Of course not. PI is special but not *that* special. If W8 will work for PS and AC it'll work for PI.

Can't speak to whatever Apple has in store but I imagine it's similar.

[Nocturnal]

Python? Not as nice as Ruby but I sure prefer it over javascript

I do prefer JavaScript, actually

Of course you do