State of Play

Living in rural isolation since late June of 2022 and not having access to Astrolog since long before that, the frequency of my astrological posts has decreased markedly. I must another effort to get it up and running on my laptop that is running Mint Linux. The problem is better discussed in my Pedagogical Posturing blog.

There's a case to be argued for moving completely online however, and abandoning my reliance on Astrolog with all its attendant installation problems when using non-Windows devices. Looking back at an earlier blog post titled An Absence of Astrolog, I mentioned astrowin.org, an online-based chart generator, and today I logged back into it. There is only my birth data there so I should add the birth details of other people that are stored on my airtable database.

Figure 1 shows a screenshot of the current planetary positions where I'm located:

Figure 1

The chart looks good. I'll discuss the current transits as they affect my personal chart in a post to the blog that I've set up for that purpose: Astro Watch. Meanwhile I'll get to work updating my database on astrowin.org.

Astrolog Returns

Frustrated with the limitations of Chrome OS Flex on my Mac Book, I installed Ubuntu 20.04 instead. It was then a matter of installing WINE and downloading astrolog.exe. After some tinkering, I was able to get it working although the drop-down menu text is tiny and I can't figure out how to make it larger. Nonetheless it's working but my biggest problem is recovering the astrolog data. I thought I'd backed it up but it appears I hadn't. I'm hoping I can find a backup somewhere. Why didn't I back it up to Google Drive? 

Figure 1 shows the transit picture for 3:29am in Jakarta on March 6th 1953. Venus and Mars are almost exactly conjunct being in 29d38m and 29d41m of Capricorn respectively. The tiny menu bar is visible at the top of the graphic.

Figure 1

If I can't recover my Astrolog data, then I will simply have to rebuild my database that was full of birth details of people that I had long forgotten. There are only a few people whose charts I am really interested in. When I've rebuilt the database, I'll make sure to back it up to Google Drive and also add the information to astrowin.org just to be sure. Figure 2 shows the results of the first entry into the Astrolog database along with the transits.

Figure 2

It's good to have Astrolog back up and running again, because I have total control of what I'm doing. This is not the case with online alternatives where there are more constraints.

An Absence of Astrolog

After years of running Astrolog under WINE on my Mac laptop, I suddenly find myself without it. The reason is that I installed Chrome OS Flex on the laptop and removed the Macintosh operating system. This OS is still in beta and there are numerous glitches. One of them is an inability to install Linux, after which I could install WINE and then run Astrolog.

On my granddaughter's laptop, I removed the Windows operating system that was capable of running astrolog.exe directly and replace it with Ubuntu. Again, I'm having trouble installing WINE, so the net result is that I can't run Astrolog on either laptop for the moment. I'll have to rely on online programs to keep track of my transits.

However, the Astrolog website links to openastro.org that has an Ubuntu repository that I'm keen to test out. Figure 1 shows a screenshot.

Figure 1

Unfortunately, I get the following error message:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:

openastro.org : Depends :  imagemagick

E: unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

Obviously this is something that I need to keep working on. Another promising link that the Astrolog website provides is to Morinus touted as a "Free Astrological Program Written in Python, Using The Swiss Ephemeris". Mind you, the site hasn't been modified since March 18th of 2017. Figure 2 shows a screenshot.

Figure 2

Again, this will take a little more research as I need to install Python from within Chrome OS Flex. Meanwhile, I always have Astrodienst to fall back on. Figure 3 shows a screenshot of my transits for today.

Figure 3

As can be seen, Venus and Mars are rapidly moving toward another conjunction. This upcoming conjunction of the two planets is the third that will occur within a space of about eight months. The dates of these conjunctions are:

• Tuesday, July 13th 2021
• Saturday, February 12th 2022
• Saturday, March 12th 2022

I wrote about the likely effects of these conjunctions in my previous post titled Mars-Venus Conjunction. 

The site astrowin.org is quite comprehensive and will display transits to a natal chart in two different forms as well as supplying many other features. See Figures 4 and 5.

Figure 4

Figure 5