Comments on: I need a little help

By: Road Trip « Watts Up With That?

Road Trip « Watts Up With That? — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 00:23:08 +0000

[...] is something that you, my faithful readers have made possible through generous donations when I asked for some help a few weeks ago. I thank you, each and every one, who donated to make this trip [...]

By: Richard Percirield

Richard Percirield — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 03:19:11 +0000

I ordered two licenses for the download version. I didn’t know that the packaged version had better backgrounds. I plan to have a version at home and one on my “Mobile Spotting” laptop. How much clearer are the images in the boxed version? The program as advertised and will be a great adjunct when I go out chasing oops I mean “Mobile Spotting”.

I also may be looking for a new Weather Station for my house. My old one was pretty beat up in Kansas when I lived there, and a new one is probably in order. Maybe I can use the stimulus check for something useful? I am still debating the wired / wireless route. My current one is wired, and I am not sure that going wireless would be of any help especially if it reduces the update frequency. it si difficult to get detailed specifications on many of the systems online.

I enjoy your site and when I visit Kansas next I will try to survey some sites for your study.

Thanks for your hard work.

By: TCO

TCO — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 17:54:18 +0000

green flare

By: Jeff Alberts

Jeff Alberts — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 04:04:44 +0000

Nothing wrong with that, Atmoz. It’s the reason I pay $170 a month for a dedicated server.

By: Atmoz

Atmoz — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 02:46:43 +0000

Yes, it’s a third party host. Am I silly for doing that? Probably, but I like the feeling that I’m in total control of my site.

By: Atmoz

Atmoz — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 02:18:13 +0000

Tamino, Rabbet, Atmoz, Deltoid, the whole bunch gets their server and bandwidth for free.

That’s not true. I pay to have my site hosted and for bandwidth. They may not be as much as what you pay, but it is out of my pocket.

REPLY: I thought your blog was wordpress like this one. Did you opt for a third party host then rather than the free service?

By: Jeff Alberts

Jeff Alberts — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 22:13:20 +0000

“If you put trash on a pedestal, it is still trash,”

Lol, good one. Though some people call it Art…

By: Rod Smith

Rod Smith — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 19:44:01 +0000

Anthony, I’m an old (really old) retired military weatherman who is appalled at the poor conditions and siting of so many of the places that your project has surveyed. Although I won’t go in to a rant about what appears to be a near total lack of management and quality control by taxpayer funded agencies, I am of the firm opinion that collecting second (third? fourth?) class observations and then running algorithms against this data (trash?) in order to predict even a short term future temperature is sheer folly.

I remember an old Oklahoma gal who once told me, “If you put trash on a pedestal, it is still trash,” which sort of expresses my thoughts a bit more colorfully. And as a computer programmer who began coding on weather computers in 1966, I also am a firm believer of “Garbage in, garbage out.”

I spent lots of time collecting and distributing world-wide observations and have a reasonably good memory of how sparse reports are from many areas of the globe. And I remember that we had to do a lot of massaging to make them useful.

ENOUGH rant!!

I’ve contributed to your trip because I believe you furnish a lot of critical information to the problem, information that is not generally available on a piece of paper and therefore unknown to most academics. You have only scratched the surface regarding data quality.

Keep up the good work, and have a good trip.

REPLY: Hi Rod, thanks so much. The entire thing is a huge puzzle for sure.

By: Larry Sheldon

Larry Sheldon — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 17:57:13 +0000

Naw, nor have I been over attentive to sed.

The problem is that I have been confined to a MSDOS, etc world for several years.

I have an old NT server downstairs that now has no function since the University fired me–I intend to put a real OS on it, but I have not yet.

RELPLY: Try Ubuntu for that old server box, it is really slick. If you don’t want slick, then I recommend “Slack” as in Slackware distro.

By: steven mosher

steven mosher — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 16:58:32 +0000

Surveying an actual weather station and comparing it to other sources
of data in the area strikes me as an great science fair project.

better than a vinager and baking soda volcano