Lunarium Blog

I was so happy when I thought that Google AppEngine team fixed their time zone implementation overnight - but I was wrong. Quite soon, time zones went awry again. Then returned back to normal, then got broken again. The truth is that this is an intermittent problem. I have recorded it in the AppEngine bug tracker and let's hope it will be really fixed one day. But this is only one of the problems with which I am struggling at the moment, instead of filling Lunarium with interesting and useful content. Another major problem is that three Google Gadgets that I have created a few years ago stopped working. I have spent just too many evenings trying to find out what went wrong. Everything seemed to be right as before the migration of Lunarium to the new platform I made sure that the feeds used by the gadgets keep working. Yesterday I have discovered that the problem was in the fact that the main URL of the site was changed from lunarium.co.uk to www.lunarium.co.uk. This change was forc...

It looks like Google team has fixed the problem with the time zones overnight. If you couldn't get correct time - please check again, it should work now. Phew... What a relief!

Unfortunately, I have just discovered a problem that prevents Lunarium from working properly for many locations right now. This problem is not mine or yours, it is a problem of the platform on which Lunarium is running - Google AppEngine. The guys haven't implemented most of the world's time zones yet. I have reported the problem to the AppEngine's news group, let's see if anything will happen soon...

Now I am having more constructive feedback, there are less and less emails saying that I have ruined my site by replacing a dark background with a light one... The most important complaint is that Lunar Calendar now doesn't provide all the textual information that was provided by the old one. This is true, of course, but the information is coming and significantly more rich than it was before. My approach has two levels: 1. Right in the calendar, each bit of information will have a 'tooltip' - a brief textual explanation of what it is and what it means that appears when you hover your mouse over that bit of information. The information displayed in such tooltips is exactly same that was available in the old calendar. Right now, I have implemented tooltips for the lunar days in the universal calendar. I believe this is a much more convenient solution than the old one. In the old calendar, you had to click on a link, say, for the same lunar day, and the link would bring you t...

The New Lunarium has replaced the old site. I have already received a number of emails asking to bring back the old site as people prefer the old design. Well, design is a very personal thing and although the old colour scheme wasn't too bad, it couldn't be used for a truly extensive resource - like what Lunarium is going to become in close future. Many complaints are very fair though as I wasn't able to complete many important details before launching the new site. Also, a few things that were supposed to work, like Lunar Informer gadget, got broken despite of my best efforts. Of the important details that are missing the two that I am going to fix in the first place are: 1. In the universal lunar calendar, clicking on various symbols will display an appropriate information, like what this or that lunar day means etc. 2. On the planetary hours page, the current hour will be highlighted and the time format will be the one that the user has selected in the Settings. I am goi...

The New Lunarium is not completed yet but the core functionality is ready and I am receiving quite a few emails asking when lunar calendar for the next 2010 year will become available. So I decided that on the 20th of October, soon after the Moon will enter Sagittarius, I will make New Lunarium public (which means I will redirect the lunarium.co.uk domain to the new online content). Many pages will be left empty, but those are pages with textual content and the text will be added to them gradually after the new site launch. There will be already the first lesson in the Free Astro School. In the overall, New Lunarium will be much bigger than the old site and I will keep adding content to it and grow it ever after the 20th October launch.