[9fans] radar

[9fans] radar

[erik quanstrom]

i finally got around to making the radar location configurable.
try "radar san fran".  if you apply rob's patch to gif(1) you'll even
see the colors correctly.

unfortunately the us government doesn't provide
radar data for europe.  sorry about that.

- erik

[9fans] radar

[erik quanstrom]

i got motivated and fixed radar so that,
- /lib/sky here is used to find the "nearest" radar station, and
- if you enter an arbitrary (us, sorry) location like "eden prarie mn", radar
will find the "nearest" radar station and display that.

i spent a few minutes looking for decent european radars, but didn't
find anything that covered the whole of europe.

- erik

Re: [9fans] radar

[smj]

> i got motivated and fixed radar so that,
> - /lib/sky here is used to find the "nearest" radar station, and
> - if you enter an arbitrary (us, sorry) location like "eden prarie mn", radar
> will find the "nearest" radar station and display that.

Very cool, it seems to be working quite well except for Seattle which
is cloudless.  But thats due to the ATX Whidbey Island station being
down for maintenance.  However, we do have a brand new coastal radar
array which has just recently been brought online.

I added: LGX Langley Hill WA to lib/stations and LGX 47.109 -124.100
(approx) to lib/stationlat

There is an interesting read about getting the array going and what it
will do for Western Washington here:  http://tx0.org/2uy

Re: [9fans] radar

[erik quanstrom]

On Wed Oct  5 01:13:08 EDT 2011, smj@9p.sdf.org wrote:
> > i got motivated and fixed radar so that,
> > - /lib/sky here is used to find the "nearest" radar station, and
> > - if you enter an arbitrary (us, sorry) location like "eden prarie mn", radar
> > will find the "nearest" radar station and display that.
>
> Very cool, it seems to be working quite well except for Seattle which
> is cloudless.  But thats due to the ATX Whidbey Island station being
> down for maintenance.  However, we do have a brand new coastal radar
> array which has just recently been brought online.
>
> I added: LGX Langley Hill WA to lib/stations and LGX 47.109 -124.100
> (approx) to lib/stationlat
>
> There is an interesting read about getting the array going and what it
> will do for Western Washington here:  http://tx0.org/2uy

i think it's already there.  what you saw was probablly a bug in
finding the station code.  i had "..." instead of "???".  what was
that dek quote, "i define unix as 30 definitions of regular expressions
living under one roof."

(pull radar again.  sorry.)

; grep ATX /lib/radar/*
/lib/radar/stationlat:ATX	48.18960544933 -122.4886090504
/lib/radar/stations:ATX	Everett/Seattle-Tacoma	WA

- erik

Re: [9fans] radar

[erik quanstrom]

> > I added: LGX Langley Hill WA to lib/stations and LGX 47.109 -124.100
> > (approx) to lib/stationlat
> >
> > There is an interesting read about getting the array going and what it
> > will do for Western Washington here:  http://tx0.org/2uy
>
> i think it's already there.  what you saw was probablly a bug in
> finding the station code.  i had "..." instead of "???".  what was
> that dek quote, "i define unix as 30 definitions of regular expressions
> living under one roof."
>
> (pull radar again.  sorry.)
>
> ; grep ATX /lib/radar/*
> /lib/radar/stationlat:ATX	48.18960544933 -122.4886090504
> /lib/radar/stations:ATX	Everett/Seattle-Tacoma	WA

ack!  misread.  i've pushed out /lib/radar/genlat which automaticly
generates the latitude listings given the station listing to save you
from guessing.

anybody know where a current station listing can be had?  i scraped
mine from a pulldown, but there's got to be an automatic way to do this?

contributions gladly accepted.  the stationlat should be self-updating
like /sys/lib/scsicodes.

- erik

Re: [9fans] radar

[smj]

> ack!  misread.  i've pushed out /lib/radar/genlat which automaticly
> generates the latitude listings given the station listing to save you
> from guessing.

No problem.  I'll grab that.

> anybody know where a current station listing can be had?  i scraped
> mine from a pulldown, but there's got to be an automatic way to do this?
>
> contributions gladly accepted.  the stationlat should be self-updating
> like /sys/lib/scsicodes.

I found this:

http://weather.rap.ucar.edu/surface/stations.txt

It also has the new LGX station and looks to be very well maintained.
It is also mirrored by noaa.gov.  And its not just US stations, does
that help?

Stephen

Re: [9fans] radar

[Andy Spencer]

On 2011-10-05 07:55, smj@9p.sdf.org wrote:
> I found this:
>
> http://weather.rap.ucar.edu/surface/stations.txt
>
> It also has the new LGX station and looks to be very well maintained.
> It is also mirrored by noaa.gov.  And its not just US stations, does
> that help?


(Please excuse my ignorance, I haven't had a chance to look at the code,
at least not recently)


I don't have the answer, but that list doesn't look quite complete
either. It appears to be missing at least KGRK (Central Texas), KOAX
(Omaha Nebraska), KYUX (Yuma Arizona), and KOUN (Oklahoma, but that's a
research radar anyway).

I've found that some websites only provide data for certain radars too,
so you'll probably want to check which are supported by the site you're
getting your images from. (RIDGE, if i remember correctly?)

Another thing to note, the Hawaii radars the are PXXX, and the Puerto
Rico radar is TJUA. If you're using a K??? pattern somewhere you might
need to update it to ???? or at least [KPT]???.

Re: [9fans] radar

[erik quanstrom]

> > It also has the new LGX station and looks to be very well maintained.
> > It is also mirrored by noaa.gov.  And its not just US stations, does
> > that help?
>
>
> (Please excuse my ignorance, I haven't had a chance to look at the code,
> at least not recently)
>
>
> I don't have the answer, but that list doesn't look quite complete
> either. It appears to be missing at least KGRK (Central Texas), KOAX
> (Omaha Nebraska), KYUX (Yuma Arizona), and KOUN (Oklahoma, but that's a
> research radar anyway).

KOUN isn't available on ridge.
GRK, OAX YUX are already in /lib/radar/stations

>
> I've found that some websites only provide data for certain radars too,
> so you'll probably want to check which are supported by the site you're
> getting your images from. (RIDGE, if i remember correctly?)
>
> Another thing to note, the Hawaii radars the are PXXX, and the Puerto
> Rico radar is TJUA. If you're using a K??? pattern somewhere you might
> need to update it to ???? or at least [KPT]???.

i think ridge is stripping the first letter of the IACO (not using the
IATA).  so OAX is KOAX/OAX not oaxaca/xoaocotla MMOX/OAX.

- erik

Re: [9fans] radar

[erik quanstrom]

> http://weather.rap.ucar.edu/surface/stations.txt
>
> It also has the new LGX station and looks to be very well maintained.
> It is also mirrored by noaa.gov.  And its not just US stations, does
> that help?

very interesting.  how do i tie this list to some place to grab images?  i'm
particularly interested in non-us sites.  i want to know of the rains in spain.

- erik

Re: [9fans] radar

[Gorka Guardiola]

>
> very interesting.  how do i tie this list to some place to grab images?  i'm
> particularly interested in non-us sites.  i want to know of the rains in spain.
>

It does not fall mainly in the plain...
Sorry, could not resist.

G.

Re: [9fans] radar

[Steve Simon]

As a UK resident it has occasionaly hit me how some bits of plan9
(and there are only a few) are US centric.

perhaps we could have somthing like /adm/country/ (analogous to /adm/timezone)
which would have various config files for things like radar, areacodes/stdcodes
zipcodes/postcodes, weather, tv etc.

I wouldn't want to follow Linux's LC_COLLATE and friends but plan9 standard way
of handling such stuff might be nice.

just my £0.02 worth.

-Steve

Re: [9fans] radar

[dexen deVries]

On Wednesday 05 of October 2011 12:47:53 Steve Simon wrote:
> As a UK resident it has occasionaly hit me how some bits of plan9
> (and there are only a few) are US centric.
> 
> perhaps we could have somthing like /adm/country/ (analogous to
> /adm/timezone) which would have various config files for things like
> radar, areacodes/stdcodes zipcodes/postcodes, weather, tv etc.
> 
> I wouldn't want to follow Linux's LC_COLLATE and friends but plan9 standard
> way of handling such stuff might be nice.

while LC_COLLATE & friends on Linux are runtime-configurable (which leads to 
extra complexity), perhaps on Plan 9 it would be OK to just link in the right 
libraries? 

let /lib/ contain libraries with subroutines for `generic' locale (the current 
implementation)
let /lib/i18n/en_GB/lib/ contain libraries with subroutines tailored for 
`en_GB' locale
let /lib/i18n/pl_PL/lib/ contain libraries with subroutines tailored for 
`pl_PL' locale

before building any program, Steve would
bind -b /lib/i18n/en_GB/lib/ /lib/

and I would 
bind -b /lib/i18n/pl_PL/lib/ /lib/

-- 
dexen deVries

[[[↓][→]]]

http://xkcd.com/732/

Re: [9fans] radar

[Steve Simon]

I think this goes further that I would (exeutable libraies)
I imagined  only that we could have a few scripts and "database" files
in country specific directories.

this model would also allow me to explicitly run usa/radar newyork
before going on holiday whilst running radar would tell
me its raining (because it always is).

this would need a new lines in my profile
(here I agree with dexen completely)

	bind -a /386/bin/uk /bin	# ?
	bind -a /rc/bin/uk /bin		# radar script etc
	bind -a /lib/uk /lib		# zipcodes, etc

more idle thoughts.

-Steve

Re: [9fans] radar

[dexen deVries]

On Wednesday 05 of October 2011 13:20:45 Steve Simon wrote:
> I think this goes further that I would (exeutable libraies)
> I imagined  only that we could have a few scripts and "database" files
> in country specific directories.
> 
> this model would also allow me to explicitly run usa/radar newyork
> before going on holiday whilst running radar would tell
> me its raining (because it always is).
> 
> this would need a new lines in my profile
> (here I agree with dexen completely)
> 
> 	bind -a /386/bin/uk /bin	# ?
> 	bind -a /rc/bin/uk /bin		# radar script etc
> 	bind -a /lib/uk /lib		# zipcodes, etc
> 
> more idle thoughts.

i'd advise against using bare area (country) code for locale. case in point: 
canada, where some user would want en_CA (english language, canadian currentcy 
etc.), and others fr_CA (french language, canadian currency etc.)

-- 
dexen deVries

[[[↓][→]]]

http://xkcd.com/732/

Re: [9fans] radar

[erik quanstrom]

> > this would need a new lines in my profile
> > (here I agree with dexen completely)
> >
> > 	bind -a /386/bin/uk /bin	# ?
> > 	bind -a /rc/bin/uk /bin		# radar script etc
> > 	bind -a /lib/uk /lib		# zipcodes, etc
> >
> > more idle thoughts.
>
> i'd advise against using bare area (country) code for locale. case in point:
> canada, where some user would want en_CA (english language, canadian currentcy
> etc.), and others fr_CA (french language, canadian currency etc.)

i don't think there's any desire here to go the route of locale.
the radar image you'll looking for is a function of location.
nothing more.

- erik

Re: [9fans] radar

[erik quanstrom]

> this model would also allow me to explicitly run usa/radar newyork
> before going on holiday whilst running radar would tell
> me its raining (because it always is).

making things country or region specific seems unnecessary
to support other radar systems do this all you need to do is tag
the station with a code for how to access it.  neither radar, nor
its users really need country info.

- erik