Brought to you by
Starstone
Where Science Rocks!
Please Support Disaster Relief Efforts!
For Hurricane Tracking for the iPhone
Visit our Friends at Kitty Code!
Eye Of The Storm has been
discontinued effective as of the end of the 2008 storm season.
Dear EOTS Customers,
I am writing this as a personal letter, as Starstone really is essentially just a single person (and occasionally his wife).
It is the end of an era for Starstone and our flagship product, Eye of the Storm™. After a great deal of soul searching, I am afraid I have to report that I am no longer able to continue development and support of this product. EOTS has seen 13 hurricane seasons come and go, and some of the years have been very busy, others not so much. Sales have been meager the last couple of years, and the operation is costly, especially during the hurricane season. Unfortunately, my other obligations simply do not provide the time required to keep this afloat only as a labor of love.
Several customers have written with suggestions about how to keep this profitable, and I appreciate their support and kind words. However, I do have a full time dream job that I dearly love, and also a part time teaching position that I must also maintain. EOTS really needs to be profitable enough to pay someone else's salary, and it has simply not been able to do so in recent years as a niche product. I would not go so far as to say that I am "burned out", but I do feel it is time for me to move on and work on some other (smaller) projects with my spare time.
EOTS has been a huge success as far as shareware is concerned. I am proud of the many years and many versions we have seen together, and I am very appreciative of all of my many (there are several thousand of you) customers over these past 13 years (yes, since 1996!). Yes, I should have charged more for upgrades, and yes I should have adopted a yearly subscription like my competitors... but I'm just more of a nerd than a business man. I've made some money, and bought some toys. Don't weep for me in this regard, it has been a worthwhile chapter in my career; but it is time for me to write the next one.
Starstone will continue to exist, and I will continue working on much smaller pet projects for the iPhone. All my desktop "day job" energies will be focused on making the worlds best astronomy and planetarium software as a developer for Software Bisque (www.bisque.com). You never know, you may see my work on your next planetarium visit :-)
Best wishes,
Richard S. Wright Jr.
rwright@starstonesoftware.com
Old Support FAQ
All "Repeating" problems are listed on this page, please scroll down and make
sure your issue is not covered here.
Please do not e-mail PCWP about server access problems. We maintain our own weather data server and datastream.
Need help? See below for common problems or questions (we'll be updating this regularly). If you don't find a solution here, please report bugs or support questions to support@starstonesoftware.com. PLEASE specify which product you are using (we have FIVE different products, two of which have nothing to do with weather), and which version of Windows/Mac OS you are running for a start. We get messages all the time "I got your program, and it doesn't work. What's wrong?" Honestly... we couldn't begin to guess. If an error message is displayed, please tell us what it is. If some feature fails to work, please tell us what it is. All products support questions go to the same person - please help us help you, and we will do our best ;-)
STARSTONE DOESN'T CARE ABOUT IT'S CUSTOMERS!
Yes we do, but that sure got your attention didn't it! ;-)
We all but weep when we have this happen, but at least once a week someone gets caught in this loop:
Step 1. E-mail Starstone's support email (support@starstonesoftware.com).
Step 2. Startstone responds, usually within a day or so.
Step 3. Our response is eaten by your spam filtering software (affectionately called the SPAM Dragon), or your return e-mail bounces because "someone" misspelled it.
Step 4. After some time, you e-mail every conceivable Starstone address, your angry because we are ignoring you. Often we are called names, or our family lineage is called into question.
Step 5. Go to step 2.
Support is largely via e-mail. We do staff up for limited phone support, but only during the active part of the US Hurricane Season. We do ship product out of season, but the EOTS part of Starstone is largely dormant during the Winter months. We will not give out lost registration numbers over the phone. If you have lost your registration number, e-mail support@starstonesoftware.com with your original order information so we can find you in our database (don't forget to ask for your registration number - e-mails that contain nothing but a name and address are usually eaten by OUR SPAM dragon). We promise if we ever sell as many copies of EOTS as Intuit sells of "Turbo Tax", that we will hire someone to answer the phone all day. Unfortunately we have found it difficult to locate people willing to do this without receiving a paycheck. ;-)
EOTS 3000
Satellite Images have "moved"
EOTS 3000 retrieves satellite imagery directly off National Weather Service Servers. Inevitably over time, some of these servers will change. The list of satellite image sources that originally shipped with EOTS needs to be updated. Unfortunately, if we update this database ourselves (via the auto-update feature), it will also erase any custom image sources entered by users. There are two solutions to this:
1. Super Easy: If you have no custom satellite images, you can just download and reinstall the latest EOTS 3000 from our web site. The first time you fetch storm data, it will reload all your storm data and you'll be set to go.
2.
Manual fix: You can edit the image sources yourself. Select "Edit" from the main
menu, then "Satellite Images..." from the drop down. This will display the
dialog box (Windows version) shown at right..
Scroll down to the Northwest Atlantic images. Click the image to edit, then click the EDIT button. Just replace each image as appropriate with the following URL's:
Name: Northwest IR
Source:http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/goes/east/nwatl/ir4-l.jpg
Name: Northwest Visible
Source:http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/goes/east/nwatl/vis-l.jpg
Name: Northwest Water Vapor
Source: http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/goes/east/nwatl/wv-l.jpg
How do I get the latest version/bug fixes?
Throughout the season we will post new builds with minor bug fixes, small feature enhancements, or cosmetic corrections. The current build # is 553. If you have build 524 or earlier, you will need to download and reinstall from one of the download links (see the section below about how to save your cities!). Later builds a menu option under "Web" called "Program Updates". EOTS 3000 will download updated files as needed and restart itself.
(Note: Windows builds before 531 will sometimes refuse to update themselves. This was due to a problem with the update.exe helper program. If you don't want to do a clean install, you can download from here (update.zip), then unzip and copy the new update.exe into the EOTS 3000 program directory.
The latest versions can always be installed fresh from:
Windows 2000/XP:
http://www.starstonesoftware.com/files/eots3kwin.exe
Mac OS X: http://www.starstonesoftware.com/files/eots3kmac.zip
Error: Couldn't resolve Proxy Name
The Update will be Canceled
(Or just about any other connection problem)
This is probably the single most common problem people report with EOTS.
Often they are quite agitated that the program simply "doesn't work". One of the
following ALWAYS resolves this problem. The few times these don't work, it has
always turned to out that someone has a firewall installed and didn't know it
(yeah, really), or they have some sort of virus/spy ware infection (NOT FROM
US!) that is gumming things up.
Basically, what these messages mean is that when EOTS tries to access the
Internet, it is being blocked. There are two causes of this:
1. (The most common): You have a firewall installed, such as Zone Alarm,
MacAffee, etc. Some sort of Internet protection software that is blocking EOTS
from accessing the Internet. These tools are installed to protect you from rouge
programs that steal information and send data back to their servers.
Unfortunately, they also prevent valid programs from working. You need to check
with the instructions for your firewall/protection software and tell it to allow
EOTS to access the Internet. We can't get around this, this is by design of your
security software!
2. (The second most common): Proxy mis-configuration. If you are on a business
network (and not a home network), you can check with your IT staff and ask them
what proxy settings you should be using in the user preferences pane of EOTS. It
is possible that there may still be some proxy systems that we cannot work with,
if this happens to you, we would be happy to work with your IT staff to resolve
the issue.
3. (Ok, just one more): Accidentally turned on proxy. If you are a home user, go
to the "Internet" tab of the user preferences dialog in EOTS. Make sure
the "Proxy" check box is NOT checked. It is not your imagination, this feature
does appear to occasionally "turn itself on" erroneously.
One of these three is almost certainly the cause of any connection problems.
Where's the Users Manual?
The "help" menu in EOTS 3000 is a "quick start" guide that refers you to the complete manual, which is located in the root directory of the CD-ROM. However... if you've downloaded EOTS 3000 there is no CD-ROM (yet, we hope!). The manual is installed even with the downloaded version. The filename is EOTSManual.pdf and it is located in the installation directory where you installed Eye of the Storm. OR... you can download the manual directly from this link:
Note, you will need acrobat reader installed to view this file (www.adobe.com).
Can I use my old .STM storm files?
No. The new EOTS 3000 is database driven and contains all the historical storms published by the National Hurricane Center. Each year, the database is updated with storm activity as the season progresses. NO MORE MISSED STORM updates after they dissipate! You can find any old storm from the current season or past season in the storms tree on the control panel. Just click and drag any storm to your map. You can also save "maps" in EOTS 3000, but all it saves in the new storm file is the map configuration and the list of storms to display.
Can I use my cities.dat file from previous versions?
That file caused a lot of problems, especially for international users. With EOTS 3000 all data is stored in a central database, so no you can't save your list of cities from the old versions. To save your cities moving forward, locate the eots.db file in the \data directory (Mac users, select "Show Contents" to view this folder) and copy it from one installation to another. In the future, we may provide and import/export capability for this.
When I put my location in from my GPS, it looks many miles away from where it should be!
There are two ways to represent a latitude and longitude. One method is to use degrees followed by a decimal point, followed by the decimal degrees. Another is to represent the degrees followed by the number of minutes and seconds. Some GPS's display one way, others the other... EOTS 3000 uses degrees, minutes, and seconds by default. If your GPS uses decimal degrees, you can change how EOTS 3000 takes locations by selecting "Edit" then "Preferences" from the main menu. Then click "Use Decimal Degrees" under the "General" tab.
EOTS 2004 and Previous
How do I upgrade from last year's edition/What is the latest version?
The Current Build (EOTS 2004) number is 404.
Most EOTS versions will update themselves (latest build of that version)
over the web automatically if you select Web/Check for Updates. Some of
the really older versions may not update themselves and you will need to
download the entire program again. EOTS versions prior to 2003 will not update
to EOTS 2003 automatically, and EOTS 2003 will not update to EOTS 2004.
EOTS 2004 customers should take advantage of the free upgrade to EOTS 3000 offer!
I'm getting "Failed to Reach Starstone Server" (or something similar)
We are hearing about this more and more this year than in years past, largely due to the extra security measures people and businesses are taking to protect themselves from the shadier aspects of working on the Internet. If you can use Internet explorer to surf the net, EOTS should also work. If not, the first thing to check is to make sure your personal or corporate firewall has been configured to let EOTS out. This is not the default behavior of a firewall! By default, if some new application shows up and wants to access the Internet, a firewall will prevent this (this is for your safety). If this is happening at your place of business contact your IT staff and they can assist you in allowing EOTS access to the Internet. If this is happening in your home, make sure any Internet security software you have installed is configured to allow EOTS access to the Internet. You may need to manually add EOTS to the list of "trusted" applications.
If this doesn't help, then the problem could be that you need to configure EOTS to specifically check for any special settings that Internet Explorer needs to access the Internet. Bring up the "User Preferences" dialog, and select the "Internet" tab. In the connection box, select the "Use Registry Settings" checkbox. You should not set any of the proxy settings unless you know for sure that your company network uses a proxy server, and what those settings should be. Again, contact your IT department for assistance.
If none of this help, or course, e-mail us at: support@starstonesoftware.com
Where are the Typhoons and Cyclones?
Eye of the Storm tracks only Atlantic, East, and Central Pacific hurricanes using data from NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration). It is true that we used to track storms worldwide, but discontinued this a year ago. We realize that there are a number of people interested in tracking these storms, and while EOTS can be used for this purpose in a manual mode (you enter the data yourself), many would like to have this available in the data stream. The data for Eye of the Storm is not 100% automated and requires a person audit the storm data 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, sometimes every two hours. We have lost money on this service for years hoping sales and interest in these storms would catch-on. We do appreciate our customers who have made use of this service, but unfortunately we were faced with the decision of either letting go of that market, or having to discontinue the product altogether. Please understand that EOTS itself is a labor of love and is not wildly profitable to begin with. The "product" is not so much the program itself, but also the weather "service", which is not free for us to produce.
We do have a long range vision for EOTS that we are continuing to pursue that does not rule out a return to global tracking in the coming years.
How do I get current seasons inactive storms?
After a storm is no longer active, we remove it from the current storm updates. If you want to get a copy of all the current seasons storms, there is an undocumented "trick"... Hold down the SHIFT key the entire time you "Fetch Advisories", and EOTS will pull in all the storms for the current season, even if they are inactive. If you want to retrieve just a specific storm, such as Charlie, you must retrieve all the storms for the season and delete any unwanted storms.
Tool Tip Text is wrong
This is a Windows XP bug that only occurs if you have an application that uses OpenGL 3D hardware acceleration. It has been fixed in Windows XP SP2, and there is an intermediate hot fix available. Get it from Microsoft here:
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=814135
Brownsville is in Texas, not Mexico!
(EOTS 2003 ONLY) This is not a problem with the program, but a data file that is supplied with the software. Unfortunately, we cannot fix this via the auto-update feature because many customers frequently update their cities database. If we tried to correct Brownsville's location, it would erase many peoples hard work of adding their own cities to the data file. You can correct this in one of three ways:
1. If you don't have any custom cities, you could uninstall EOTS 2003 and reinstall (after downloading a new version from our web site). This is pretty much a "brute force" method, but some people just seem to like doing this!
2. Download a new cities file from HERE, and save it over your old cities.dat file. This file is usually located in "c:\Program Files\Eye of the Storm\Data\.
3. Just change the location manually via the cities edit window. Select Edit/Cities from the main window, and double click Brownsville. This brings up a box that allows you to change the latitude and longitude of the city. Click on "save". We also have better coordinates for Corpus Christi as well. You can use the following values:
Brownsville 25.97N by 97.51W
Corpus Christi 27.71N by 97.30W
How do I get the High resolution maps?
To maintain the widest compatibility with the large number of systems, Eye of the Storm does not automatically select the best available map settings. You may notice when you zoom in very close that your maps are blocky and have poor definition as shown below.
Old Busted - Zoom in "very close" - default works well even on old
computers but zoom is limited.
Two settings on the User
Preferences dialog can improve this. First, select "Max Texture
Memory". This selects a higher resolution texture for the images, but
doubles the amount of RAM used for the maps. If you have a 3D graphics card that
supports OpenGL (most gaming or newer systems have this), you can try turning
off "Force Software Rendering". This uses your graphics cards advanced
capabilities and will eliminate the blocky nature of the maps when zoomed in,
and will allow you to scroll around without switching to the coastline view as
you move. You will need to restart EOTS after changing these settings. If for
some reason your 3D graphics card is not compatible with EOTS, you can restart
EOTS again holding down the SHIFT key until you see the maps displayed, and the
"Force Software Rendering" setting will be turned off.
There are two
additional high resolution texture sets included on the CD ROM for those with
higher end 3D or gaming graphics cards. Look in the "\EarthMaps"
directory on the CD for a readme.txt file with instructions on how to copy the
higher resolution maps to your system. The "Uber-Maps" (that means
"Super-Maps") directory are only for systems that have 128 meg or more
of VIDEO RAM. This is a very high resolution set for the entire earth.
<- New Hotness for 2003 - requires the higher end OpenGL gaming graphics cards (NVidia GeForce or ATI Radeon's recommended).
How do I remove the Eye of the Storm Demo or Screen
Saver Files?
The newer versions of all our software supports the Windows uninstaller. Select "Add Remove Programs" from your Control panel, and select the application you wish to remove. If the Screen Saver is not shown here, you can locate the file "Eye of the Storm.scr" manually (using the Windows explorer find tool) and delete it.
When I enter my city's GPS coordinates it shows off the coast or in the wrong place...
Short answer: EOTS uses decimal degrees. Consult your GPS documentation to see if it reads decimal degrees or not.
Long answer: Most GPS's apparently do not read decimal degrees, but read degrees - followed by a decimal point (who's bright idea was this?), followed by the MINUTES. Often the minutes are given to four decimal places further adding to the confusion. A recent example:
34.4380 North Latitude. This was actually 34 degrees, and 43.80 minutes. To
convert minutes to degrees, simply divide the part to the right of the (fake)
decimal point by 60 and add to the whole part of the original degrees. For this
example, the correct decimal degrees would be:
= 34 + (43.80 / 60)
= 34 + .73
= 34.73 degrees.
The same goes for latitude and longitude.
This said, it is still possible that coordinates may appear slightly off the coast in the coastline mode (not the detailed map). The coastline mode is a very rough approximation of the world coastline (some islands are not even represented), and small errors are still quite possible.
Yes, a frequent suggestion is to allow either mode such as we do in The Fourth Day™... next version ;-)
There are "Hurricanes" all over the place, and none show up?
If you aren't getting an error message and you just get "No Storm", then it is likely you have a very old version of our software. The older programs pulled data from this web site. As traffic has increased, we moved the data to a dedicated weather server. We continued to serve weather data off the old server for two years before recently pulling the plug for good. If you have the Personal Edition, that has since been discontinued and you will need to upgrade. If you are an EOTS (Advanced Edition) customer you need either EOTS 2002 or an EOTS 2000 with a build number greater than 230. If you are a paid EOTS 2000 customer the EOTS 2002 upgrade was free to everyone we had a valid e-mail address for. If you were left off, please send support an e-mail with your name and registration number and you will receive download instructions. In a pinch, you can download the demo, put in your registration number, then do an "check for updates" on the Web menu to refresh your installation. EOTS 2003 or 2004 customers who cannot retrieve storms are likely having connection problems. Contact support@starstonesoftware.com.
There are "storms" all over the place, and none show up?
Occasionally we have people who misunderstand the purpose of our hurricane tracking program. The Eye of the Storm software and screen saver only tracks Hurricanes. A hurricane is not a severe storm. A hurricane is a specific type of tropical cyclone that occurs in the Atlantic and East Pacific oceans. Elsewhere in the world, hurricanes are also known as Typhoons and Cyclones (not the same a Tornadoes!).
The EOTS Screen Saver shows no storms, or cannot connect.
The EOTS screen saver requires an active internet connection when it is
activated. So the first requirement is that you must be on-line when the screen
saver starts. This design is ideal for people with DSL/Cable or some other
always-one internet connection. Before trying anything else, make sure you have
the latest version of the screen saver. The latest is version 2.3 and it can be
downloaded from the download page at:
http://www.starstonesoftware.com/download.htm
The later versions contain bug fixes too, not just new copyright notices ;-)
If you still cannot get storm data to retrieve and plot, bring up the screen
saver settings dialog, and click on the "Advanced" button. Try
changing back and forth from "Use Microsoft Settings" and "Use
Direct Connect". If you are using a proxy server, there is also an option
on this screen to enter that information.
Finally, many Netscape users have reported that IE is set for off-line mode (this interferes with the screen saver). Start IE and select the File menu, and make sure there is no check mark next to "Work Off-Line".
The GOES-8 and GOES-10 images are identical in the Satellite viewing tool...
EOTS 2002 includes a new tool for organizing and retrieving satellite images. A list of pre-defined satellite image sources is included, and for build 253 and earlier the GOES-8 and GOES-10 images refer to the same URL. We can't fix this via the auto-update feature because this file is modified each time you use the tool (to save which images you want to retrieve). The only fix we have is to download the file sources.txt (<- right click on it, and select "Save Target As...") and replace the sources.txt file in your EOTS 2002 installation directory.
How do I find out what my latitude and longitude are?
You local Coast Guard office can usually tell you your coordinates from your street address. If not, visit one of the sites below and search for your address:
www.mapblast.com
www.zipinfo.com/search/zipcode.htm
http://maptech.com
If you live in a US territory, our other product The Fourth Day comes with a database of over 20,000 locations with latitude and longitude. You can download the shareware from our other web site at www.eveningshow.com.
Where's my Tropical Depression?
You may need to check the 'Tropical Depressions' checkbox on the Internet Tab of the User Preferences dialog - this is checked by default.
Missing OpenGL32.dll.
Starstone's Eye of the Storm™ uses a graphics API called OpenGL, which isn't natively supported by the very first
release of Windows 95. Windows 95/OSR2, Windows 98, and Windows NT all support
OpenGL natively (it's built in).
If your getting a message box when you start Eye of the Storm that says you are missing this file, never fear! You can download the appropriate files right here. Click on the highlighted text here: OpenGL95.zip (357KB), to download a .zip archive containing the two files you need (opengl32.dll and glu32.dll). Simply copy these files (after extracting them) into your Windows \system directory, or the directory you installed Eye of the Storm into (Usually, "Program Files\Starstone Software Systems, Inc.\Eye of the Storm, Personal Edition").
If you are unfamiliar with .zip archives, or are not sure where your 'system' directory is - click here to download our easy OpenGL installer (917KB). Download the OpenGLInstaller.exe program file and double click on it to start the installation program. DO NOT run this program unless you have the original edition of Windows 95 AND you are specifically getting the error message that you are missing OpenGL32.DLL.