Categories
Weather Weblogging

Weather junkies rejoice

I’ve been a subscriber to the Weather Underground for a few years now. For the cost of 5.00 a year, you can access all the functionality at the site, without ads and including radar pictures during peak times. The weather forecasting is superior to Weather channel’s site, and the maps and graphics much cleaner and easier to read. For a weather junkie, Weather Underground is candy.

Recently the site has added weblogs as a component of its interactive services. Now, in addition to sharing photos and personal weather station information, you can now share your intimate thoughts and deep corporate secrets. Well, as long as neither are obscene, because the company has put censorship control in the hands of the customers — allowing each of us to ‘flag’ whether a post is obscene or not.

My weblog, with it’s first innocuous entry is here. The left side of the blog page contains page controls, including options controlling whether to display the top photo banner and a login. For members, the left side also has a link to member settings, Weather Email and Mail Box, My Photos, My Blog, and the Forecast Fliers.

The right side displays thumbnails of recent photos I’ve uploaded. By uploading them, I give Weather Underground explicit permission to use the photos for the company’s own purpose, though I retain full copyright. Following the photos are links I’ve added to the weblog, and the weather stations I monitor . These stations are maintained by a network of people who run their own personal weather stations and then use software to upload the data to the site.

Before I started uploaded photos and creating WunderBlog entries, I could add weather forecasts as favorites and email alerts. This is in addition to the click and zoom radar and subscribing to weather casts through Bloglines, based on the RSS feeds associated with each individual community. (I’ve even thought about trying something a little interesting with the feeds and my comments, because lord knows, we need more toys.) I also use the Trip Planner to check out typical weather conditions when I’m planning a cross-country drive.

Now the site has weblogs and cross-member communication. I’ve already had my first email message, with kind words on one of my photos–the bee on the water lily. Kind considering the great photo the sender had just posted–take a look at that critter’s face. (Want more critter closeups, then check out this damselfly.)

About the only thing missing at Weather Underground from a social network perspective is tags. They do have categories for the photos, though, so don’t despair.

Though all of the tech is fun to play with, there’s a great deal of usefulness about all of this interactivity. The personal weather stations not only provide in-depth current weather information, they also provide history, which can then be used to help out with other technology such as the trip planner. In his weblog, the Weather Underground’s top meteorologist provides a more in-depth look at weather patterns and what they mean, such as the exceedingly calm spring we’ve had this year (Oklahoma had no tornadoes in May — a record). He was also able to issue an alert about a pending bill in Congress that would close the NWS (National Weather Service) data from small, independent companies if the data is provided by ‘commercial providers’–a direct violation of federally funded data being made available to the people without prejudice (and a bill instigated by a couple of larger, commercial weather data providers.)

(He also provided pointers to a graph of the drought that’s hitting us and surrounding states. From the look of it, I think one reason we may be seeing more bear in Missouri now is a severe drought in northern Arkansas, where most of these bear live.)

In the Weather Station discussion, how the stations tracked Arlene is mapped, and how the new weblogging system is put together is discussed in the developer’s weblog.

I don’t plan on posting frequently to my WunderBlog weblog. I’ll most likely leave it for weather-related writings that might bore most of you. (Though they do make a nice break from the ‘women in weblogging’, blasting the Illuminati, and other too-typical fare, eh?) It has been interesting to watch this site evolve from being ‘just’ a weather web page to being the center of a rather thriving little community. A nice next step would be an API that allows integrated access from other sites, though this might overwhelm the services if too successful. Besides, at 5.00 a year, mustn’t get too greedy.

Categories
Photography

Cyber Moon

Mother Earth, what can I say? You have a great looking kid.

tower moon

Categories
Writing

The words we use

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Robert Scoble changes his opinion about the China/MSN Spaces issue, and decides since his wife, son, best friend, Dan Gillmor, Rebecca MacKinnon, and several Chinese webloggers say he’s wrong, he must be wrong.

I don’t know why this irritated me so much, but it has. Perhaps it’s the idea that opinions have a critical mass, and once it’s reached, the opinion must be ‘wrong’. Maybe its because all the people congratulating Scoble on being ‘man’ enough to admit his mistake are doing so because he now supports their viewpoint.

Regardless, it’s nice to be an environment where there are no restrictions on the words we use when we write. That is, after all, the essence of being free to speak: the words we use.

Categories
People Semantics

Danny gets sudsy

Recovered from Wayback Machine.

Mark Woodman did a nice interview with Danny Ayers on life, love, corner offices overlooking chicken coops, and cats.

Weeellll, not really. The focus of the interview was Danny’s steadfast work with XML, RDF, Atom, and his new book, Beginning RSS and Atom (an excellent book, by the way, and rich with detail and Lotsa Code).

Danny talks about RSS 1.0 and how the old gray mare ain’t what she used to be…well….actually, she is what she used to be. Anyway, he says not to discount the old girl just yet. Now the rest of the world is into Meta, her time has come.

One thing, though — RSS 1.0 is not RDF. By this, I don’t mean it’s not based on the RDF model, and created using RDF/XML. No, I mean that the two are not synonymous.

When I ported my soon-to-be released extensive metadata layer for weblogs to WordPress, the first problem I ran into was the tool used ‘rdf’ in URLs to indicated an RSS 1.0 syndication feed. In my own Wordform, I use rss1, which is much more accurate. RSS 1.0 is the syndication feed; RDF is the model/syntax. You don’t use ‘xml’ to indicated Atom, and you don’t use ‘winer’ to indicate RSS 2.0. So tool makers — stop using ‘rdf’ when you mean RSS 1.0.

I mean it. I’m going to start getting pissy about this.

Oh, and I also want to extend my congratulations to Les on getting engaged. Your lady is a luck woman, Les.

Categories
Just Shelley

Kicking funk

Today’s a really nice day–warm, but with a cool breeze and low humidity. The clouds are nice, fat, and fluffy white, against a dark blue sky and people smile at you without you even having to ask for it; even the birds seem to be singing more. This is good because I’ve been in a funk lately, and just haven’t been feeling up to challenging trails (or even sidewalks).

The run of good weather will last through the weekend, so this will probably be my last post for a few days, as I am turning this titanium dominatrix off and spending time outside. In the outdoors. Away from computer. Away from my cellphone. Maybe even away from the camera, though I’m not sure I know how to walk without the camera bag on my back.

First though I had errands to run. I got my hair cut by Ramona, who did a really great job. It’s now a mass of short, wavy curls, with a flirty little flip at the bottom. I feel so hip and fun–not bad for one of those inexpensive walk-in places. Not bad for an older woman with the funk.

Then it was to Petsmart to pick up grass to give to my chlorophyll-junkie cat, and to spend time petting and patting the pups that people bring in. Today, one of the women who works at the store had her 12-week old west highland terrier puppy with her, and that little sweetie just stole my heart.

After extended puppy therapy, I stopped by the market and picked up fresh fruit: bananas, white nectarines, pluots (plum-apricot hybrid), and cherries. The cherries are really nice firm, dark bings–sweet and juicy. And the rest of the fruit seems equally luscious, though it cost an outrageous amount of money. It’s not easy or cheap to eat healthy, but I felt needed the fresh produce, for medicinal reasons.

I also picked up some homemade spinach fettuccine noodles, as well as some unusual new small, but larger than cherry-sized tomatoes, artichokes in seasoned oil, black olives, garlic, onion, cream, and cheese to make a vegetarian Alfredo. It’s simple — just cut the tomatoes and olives up into the artichoke oil to marinade for a time (then drain), cook the sauce (with the garlic and onion) and the noodles and then toss all of together . That’s it — no salad, no bread. And fresh fruit and sorbet for desert.

If this doesn’t kick the funk, nothing will.

Coming back, I passed an intersection where firemen will hold their boots out to collect for charities, and one of the local churches collects for its mission downtown. Today, though, a young man was standing on it, holding up a sign that read, simply, “Down on my luck”. Just standing there, stiff backed, holding that sign. Not approaching the cars, or extending containers to the drivers. Just standing there, looking straight ahead.

I guess it goes to show that no matter how put upon you’re feeling, someone else has it worse. If the sight of him didn’t kick me in the funk, it definitely kicked me in the butt.

Life is good. I have fresh cherries to eat, so life is good.