This just crossed my mind:
Screenscraping sucks. The real way to do this is to decode the raw METAR observation by hand. This is not a trivial task, mainly because they look like this:
KDSM 252054Z 15008KT 10SM -TSRA BKN034 BKN065 OVC080 20/19 A2979 RMK AO2 WSHFT 2020 TSB07RAB08 SLP080 TS NE-E-S MOV NE OCNL LTGICCC P0040 60049 T02000189 55021
Long time, no Blog… looks like this turned into an unofficial announcement :)
I’m rapidly approaching a critical point in my development of my Weather RSS Feed project, entitled openWeather.
openWeather is currently a hodgepodge of XML, XSLT, Python, MySQL, FreeBSD, and Apache HTTPD as well as Cocoon.
There isn’t much left to do, actually, and I will be releasing the service to open beta testing. The beta service will include free RSS feeds which contain current weather conditions for the 50 states here in the US. If there’s enough demand, I’ll consider releasing feeds for some overseas locations during the beta, as well.
I’ve found comments about Weather RSS Feeds at this post over on LaughingMeme, as well as Tim Bray’s comments about uses for RSS.
Looks like the Cocoon community just got a little more solidified with the creation of Orixo (via Matthew Langham), which seems to be some sort of alliance between European Open-Sourced companies who provide support for Cocoon. Also mentioned on Steven Noels’ weblog.
This is a nice little surprise to see on my sabbatical :) Hopefully these guys can give Cocoon some good PR in the next year or so and open up some Cocoon-related jobs for me here in the U.S. , or at least demand for commercial support in the U.S. I’d love to start a company here in the states. Must.. finish.. school…
Or maybe just a little LIFTA PULLA.
My only regret the past couple days has been not getting into any of the 3 Lifter Puller shows.
Blogging remains light.
Bye.