The Davis Vantage Vue

I also happened across a compact weather station in the same catalog – the Davis Vantage Vue. I decided to buy it instead of the radio to replace my old Scientific Oregon WMR-968 station which was in a state of total disrepair.

Putting the new station together turned out to be easier than taking the old one apart. Besides being a huge spider convention, the bolts were so badly rusted onto the mast that I finally hammered all the old hardware off into pieces.

Despite the station’s low cost, connecting it to a USB port ends up adding an extra $150. That’s for the hardware adapter and a software package. A standalone Ethernet-connected version is also available for $250.  The WeatherLink software appears to be straight out of the Windows 95/98 era – good enough to confirm that the station’s data transfer is working, but that’s about it.

Weewx

I had used wx200d on Linux with the old WMR-968 station. It provided a reliable daemon along with everything needed to graph data, report to Weather Underground and CWOP, and send packets out over the local APRS network via RF on 144.39 MHz. I had to do some extra perl scripting to glue it all together, but that was part of the fun.

So, what was the new Swiss Army Knife for the Davis Vantage View on Linux to be? wview was the early frontrunner, but while installing it, I could feel the time-vacuum of dependencies and troubleshooting that a lot of Unix based projects turn into. While checking alternatives, I found a modest sounding package called weewx that was almost easy to overlook. It’s a well thought out system written in Python by Tom Keffer. I put it in place, set a few variables, installed the init.d script, and went on my way. It provides a comprehensive page of data that can be used in place or automatically FTP’d to a remote server. It reports to Weather Underground, CWOP (APRS-IS), and PWS Weather. It’s also well templated and object oriented – all very extensible in general.

APRS – Back to Radio

The only thing left to figure out was how to get it onto the local APRS ham radio network. I got my old Kenwood TH-D7AG working again, hooked it up to the server using a serial-to-USB adapter, and put it in standard TNC mode where it’s bypassing the built in APRS and simply receives regular TNC commands.

Since the CWOP routine in weewx already creates the same packet needed for APRS, it seemed a shame to rewrite anything. But having never worked in Python, my first instinct was to use my original perl script written for wx200d, and have it read directly from weewx’s SQLite database. Knowing this wasn’t the best way to do it, and having a recent interest in learning Python, I put a message on the weewx Google Groups forum and immediately received some great direction from Tom on how it might be best integrated into weewx. It only took a few hours after that to get it working. Although it will probably be obsolete by the next version of weewx, I made it available on github in case anybody else needs it.

Skycam

Okay, it’s actually more of a view-of-sky-somewhat-obstructed-by-trees-cam, but I really wanted to do a real time view of the sky this time. It’s the Foscam FI8918W wifi camera in an upstairs window. It has a built in web server that provides live images and video, and the ability to remotely pan and tilt from any Internet connected device. It also makes a nice way to continue watching a storm long after nearby lightning chases everybody inside.

The old weather station lasted three or four years – I hope this one will last as long or longer. It will definitely be easier to replace when the time comes.

- Brad N8QQ

Speaking of which, has anyone else noticed that all Ruby podcasters and screencasters sound like they’ve been neutered and reprogrammed by aliens to be void of all but the most mildly pleasant Xanax-laced emotions?  Very even keel and NPR-sounding, as you drift… off… into… Roooooooby…..

It always helps to have a real application when learning something like a new programming language, and having recently completed an upgrade to my Perl Module for the QRZ Callbook API, it seemed that porting it to a Ruby Gem might be the perfect goal.  Armed with “The Ruby Cookbook” and “The Ruby Programming Language” in my Safari Books account, and some free time during the holidays, I began.

The first problem encountered was trying to use Ruby on Debian, the epitome of stability in my opinion, and my server environment of choice for that very reason.  The Ruby package for Debian had already been installed on the system in order to use s3sync.  But when trying to do something as simple as listing the remote Ruby Gems, it produced a fairly cryptic error.  Researching the error eventually led to this post from one of the Debian package maintainers. The reputation of Ruby’s instability was immediately showing itself.

Compiling Ruby from source seemed the only realistic way to move on.  I installed the latest version, 1.9.2.  It seemed like a good idea at this point to make sure s3sync and s3cmd were still working, only now they were producing fatal errors.  Research confirmed that the s3sync tools simply do not work with Ruby version 1.9.2.  So I installed Ruby version 1.8.7 from source instead, and thought very seriously about abandoning the project.

Eventually I did finish and publish my new Ruby Gem and felt a little less behind the programming curve afterward.  (Read: keeping up with the youngstahs)  I do like the language a lot – it feels like you can accomplish many things in fewer lines than other languages, and that the code is very clean and legible.  And it does seem that there’s something just plain fun about it, similar to the way OS X feels good in a can’t-necessarily-put-your-finger-on-it way.  And RVM (Ruby Version Manager) appears to be a slick (and fun) way to manage an otherwise unstable version environment.

Fluency in both Perl and jQuery seemed helpful since most concepts in Perl translate fairly well to Ruby – such as the array and control structures – and the endlessly chained object oriented methods feel a lot like jQuery.

Time and energy-allowing, I’ll probably take a more serious pass at Rails; I have an application in mind.  I abandoned Rails the first time when it became clear that incorporating it into our Apache-based server environment at work wasn’t realistic.  This time the approach will be with an application that’s more standalone in nature.  And after learning about Passenger, I have at least some confidence that maybe Rails and Apache can co-exist better than used to be the case – and it might not even be slow!  We shall see…

I’ve been using Google Apps for both work and personal Email for several years, and I love it for many reasons. The web-based interface does come in handy from time to time – it’s the only way to search for messages and administer the account – but, there are a few pieces of functionality implemented oddly enough that I can’t use it as my main interface for mail. So I continue to just use it as a back-end via IMAP with a mail client native to whichever operating system I’m using at the time.

Until last year, threaded messages was one of these stoppers. Thankfully, Google finally offered the option to turn that off. Google’s products often remind me of 37 Signals in that they believe they know more about what you need than you do. The result is that they offer limited configuration options; forced message threading was a glaring example of that.

But, that still leaves two annoyances I’m unable to move beyond…

1. The date on the message listing shows only the date, and not the time of day – unless the message was received on the current day. Further, if you want to know the time the message was received, it’s two clicks away. After viewing the message, you must click “show details”, as though the time of day the message was received is of little value. When trying to switch, I was amazed at how often I needed to know that, and how annoying it was when it wasn’t immediately visible in the message list. I would like the option of having something brief like “2011-01-01 2:37p” on each and every listing.

2. When replying or forwarding a message, instead of including the basic header info listed above the quoted original message, it only says, “On Jan 01 2011, Bob Smith wrote:”. The million dollar question this leaves is: who was copied on the original message? Am I really the only person who finds it highly useful to know who was copied on the original message? (Apparently so.) This really makes it feel like a toy rather than an enterprise level interface. And this isn’t just a problem with Google. Most free email clients, like Mozilla Thunderbird and Apple’s Mail client for OS X, have this same problem to one degree or another. Some will use the full header info with forwarded messages, but not replies.

Oddly, Microsoft seems to be the only maker of email clients that understands this. So in the meantime, I continue use Outlook on Windows, and Entourage on OS X. And there’s no decent equivalent for the Linux desktop the last time I checked – same problems.

There’s also the bigger issue of any web-based interface with not being able to just arrow down through each message in the list and see a full preview of the message, but I think I could get past that.

And here’s an audio version with full instrumentation, recorded with Ric Hordinski who’s done production work with the likes of Peter Frampton, Phil Keaggy, and David Wilcox.

Invitation

This is the Invitation
To a new conversation
Of depth over speed
Of gift over need
A new Listening

The structure of how we gather
Speaks of what really matters
Telling a new
Story of Who
We are to each other

This is the Invitation
Community’s Restoration
By just showing up
We’re gifted enough
To birth a new world

And though we don’t know what it will look like
We’re feeling that world’s alive
Like it’s ready to bloom
Here in this room
The seeds in each life.

So community’s new frontier
Is finding all that we need right here
To weave a rich local life
Into  a tapestry lined
With the connections we share.

This is the invitation
To join a celebration
Of Neighbors and friends
Connecting again
Creating the new…

Neighbors and friends
Connecting again
Creating the new.

My neighbors and friends
I’m glad to come in
And be here
With you.

© 2009 Randy Weeks

It’s definitely possible that Twitter, or Facebook, or some new service will figure out a different way to format article links and titles embedded in updates in a predictable way that some new type of aggregator will be able to save for you.  But why would anybody do that when RSS is already ubiquitous.  Until these social networking feeds become strictly channelized, it’s tough to pull out every article from all your favorite news sources.  Even then, it still feels very kludgy to try and form the output of a Twitter feed into something as useful as RSS already is.

On a larger scale, I’m not convinced that the Twitter model will last in its current form anyway.  I’ve heard people whose opinions I respect say that Twitter will soon be the “new dial tone.”  It would be fun to think so, and I believe its style of communication will carve out a permanent place on the Internet, I just don’t think people will find it useful for everything.  Like so many technologies before Twitter – blogs, push, frames, chatrooms, and even RSS comes to mind – they’ve all found a their uses within the big picture, but they haven’t overtaken as some completely new and dominant paradigm like these writers would seem to imply.  They also say that the new attention-scattered generation is why Twitter will eventually take over, but it doesn’t appear that teens really care about these services more than their older counterparts.

Honestly, I’m not sure they know the scope of what they’re saying when they flippantly mention that RSS is becoming irrelevant.  Based on past experience, I wouldn’t look for the little orange RSS icons to go away any time soon.

(syndicated from blog.netcrafters.com)

Multiple IM Clients

Then there are the multiple IM clients that have been popular for a few years. The most popular of these are the Pidgin open source project, formerly known as Gaim, and Trillian, an application that comes in both free and paid versions. Pidgin has a vanilla interface but handles all the popular IM protocols in one IM client. They recently came out with a plug-in for Facebook chat, as well. By comparison, Trillian is a very slick and skinnable application that also handles many IM protocols in one spot. Both of them also offer an interface to IRC (Internet Relay Chat). I used the Pidgin client as my only multiple IM client for many years.

The Best of Both Worlds

Then I discovered Digsby. Digsby aims to do the best of both types of applications. You get the multiple IM goodness of Pidgin and Trillian, along with lightweight interfaces for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and MySpace. You can have it notify you on varying and configurable levels any time there’s a new update in any of the feeds, as well as post your own updates. It will also notify of you new email for any email accounts that you specify.

Surely different people have different needs, and there may be those who still prefer to run each IM client and Social Network interface individually. But I’ve found that Digsby handles the perfect combination of what I do every day, and has made for a great everyday IM/Social Networking client.

(syndicated from blog.netcrafters.com)

• Microsoft is billing Bing as a “decision engine.”
• It uses attractive and lightweight graphics. For people who want an interesting design on their search engine interface, this may be a plus.
• They’re experimenting with Real Time Search. For now, this just means they’re including recently posted Twitter content from a few celebrities and tech industry personalities. But real-time search is a hot topic at the moment and they’re actually doing something with it.
• For developers and webmasters, Bing provides an API (Application Programming Interface) and some basic tools.

It’s also worth noting that Bing has taken one percent of the search market share from Google since their announcement. From April to June, Google’s market share fell from 79.1% to 78.5%. Yahoo remained consistent at 11%, and Microsoft went from 7.2% to 8.2%.

It seems hard to imagine anybody dethroning Google as the king of search, but with a Yahoo redesign/rebranding also due in the fall, it will be interesting to see how the search engine space race continues to develop!

In the meantime, here are a few links to some of the more lively news stories Bing has been creating:

Kayak to Bing: Stop Copying Us! (wired.com)

Google mocks Bing and the stuff behind it (The Register)

Google Does Not Mock Bing (Vijay Gill)

(syndicated from blog.netcrafters.com)