Greg In The Desert

I normally haven’t been writing “year in review” type posts, but this year I thought I had made significant enough improvement to Greg In The Desert to make a few notes.

I would like to think that my actual writing has improved. I have spent quite an effort on editing and I think it shows in my posts. It’s not where I would like it to be but it is better. I have also moved to dedicated hosting using Wordpress and it has been a huge improvement over the previous systems I used. I wished I had switched sooner.

It was difficult to get back into writing posts when my dad died this summer, but I’ve started to pick up again in the last few months. I’ve been able to increase traffic and increase affiliate and google adsense income. It’s enough to cover the costs of hosting plus a little (maybe enough for a few tanks of gas). To better target subject matter, have considered breaking Greg In The Desert into at least two blogs with Greg In The Desert’s subject matter focusing Home Improvement and Automation.

I can see the potential to make real money on the internet by blogging. Whether I have the time needed to devote to it is another matter.

Here’s a top 10 list of posts by raw page views.

• Resolving The 6X Red Blinking Light Of Death On My Sony TV (with pictures)
• Costco La Crosse Technologies Weather Station WS-2810
• iPhone App 2 Of The Week: Bikini Blast
• Original Lego Space Theme Is 30 Years Old
• iPhone App Of The Week: Jaadu VNC
• Baja BE500 500 Watt Electric Scooter
• Robert Kearns, Inventor of Intermittent Wipers Dies
• 1957 Buick Super For Sale
• Albuquerque Craigslist: 1950 Fleetline, 1967 Mustang & 1973 F100
• iPhone App Of The Week: iHome Remote

Costco has La Crosse Technologies weather center that appears to be the same as the La Crosse Weather Pro Center WS-2810. I couldn’t find any markings on the package at the Costco in Albuquerque other than Costco Specific.

The WS-2810 is has PC compatibility using a wireless USB dongle. I’m interested to know if it’s Mac compatible. La Crosse only supplies PC software but I’m using WeatherTracker by After Ten Software with a similar wired model I picked up last year. This wireless model looks to be improved over the wired model I have now.

Costco’s price was around $80 and the La Crosse website lists the WS-2810 at $249.99. I did not see a simialr model on Amazon’s La Crosse Technology Professional Weather Center page (Update: There are 2810’s on Amazon
, they are not labeled as such are there are currently none available).

The description from La Crosse’s website.

WS-2810
Weather Pro Center:
Wind • Rain • Weather •
PC Software
$249.99

• Included PC Interface
• Wind Chill, Direction and Speed
• Solar Powered Wind Sensor
• Rain Data
• Forecast w/ Tendency
• IN/OUT Temp
• IN/OUT Humidity
• Weather Alarms w/ Storm Warning

Dimensions:
Receiver: 4.59" x 0.94" x 7.01"
Thermo-hygro:3.13" x 3.54" x 7.45"
Rain Sensor: 5.18" dia. x 7.19"
Wind Sensor:9.84" x 5.74" x 11.11"

My next option would be the Vantage Vue wireless weather station for about $300 at Amazon which is considerably more expensive.

• Spring like skiing in Durango. http://twitpic.com/1iv7c #
• Wifi at Purgys is pay. Ha ha! I have super case edge by at&t! #
• I’m going to miss Durango. http://twitpic.com/1j0bk #
• Thanks to @weeklyalibi for linking to me in their blog #
• It looks like I got about 4 episodes of BSG to catch up to #
• @jeremyjojola @bsailer it’s Stone Design by the way, they make Mac apps too. http://www.stone.com/ in reply to jeremyjojola #
• What I hate about Twitterrific: displays messages with full names but replies with short names. I can’t keep track of who is who. #
• @dylanhecht TwitterFon is for iPhone. Twitterrific is for Mac. in reply to dylanhecht #
• Almost through the latest episode of BSG. Wow. Didn’t quite follow it all though. #
• @dylanhecht I didn’t realize there was an iPhone version of Twitterrific. in reply to dylanhecht #
• @marcelius exactly. in reply to marcelius #
• No Country For Old Men review: Meh. #
• Blog: Obama Speaks At My High School Tomorrow In Mesa, Arizona http://tinyurl.com/al2cjc #
• Time to get off my ass, out of my pajamas and get some remodeling done. #
• Hulu is disabling Boxee. http://tinyurl.com/cyuzsj #
• There’s a sentence I never thought I would write. #
• @fbihop That’s a tempting device to get. in reply to fbihop #
• @NoraReed link please, i must examine this for myself. in reply to NoraReed #
• @NoraReed I’m seeing no problems with any of them. in reply to NoraReed #
• Interesting to know that “That Obama is the “Black Beast” of the apocalypse?” #
• Myspace salute is a digital image of you holding a sign with MySpace.com and your Friend ID http://tinyurl.com/brqsuz #
• @adin so how is it other than the crappy haircut. What does it cost for just a cut? in reply to adin #
• So, where do people set up vacations to Vegas? #
• @claystorm Not a in-n-out burger, but I will take it. Do you know where? in reply to claystorm #
• 55 degrees in Rio Rancho, according to my weather station. Feels a lot warmer than that. #
• Now 65 degrees in Rio Rancho, according to my weather station. #
• Had to clean out the NatureMill. It’s the most foul smelling odor, i cannot even begin to describe. #
• Blog: 5 Pictures From The Rio Rancho Flickr Pool http://tinyurl.com/ac5458 #
• Watching last weeks SNL. Is it me or did the Jonas Brothers sound terrible. #

I’ve made some changes to Karl Smith’s NOAA Weather Script (revving to 1.1) for use in Indigo. Karl’s script is nice because it uses free NOAA weather data that they make available via XML. Since I don’t have my own weather station, this will get me close enough to getting the weather data needed for my Home Automation system to make decision.

My changes include:

• Changing the observation time to be a applescript friendly format.
• It’s now an attachment and can be run using the function GetNOAAData().
• It auto generates the trigger to run the function every 15 minutes. Just create startup action with the GetNOAAData function and that’s all that should be needed.

In my next revision I would like to make the data pull a little more intelligent by having it keep track of the average time between observation time so it’s not overtasking the NOAA servers.

You can download this script here: NOAA Weather Script.scpt.zip

Other attempts at downloading weather data:

• Weather Data From Weather Underground
• Another way to get weather from the internet (Original NOAA download)
• Getting weather data from the internet (Using WeathermanX)
• AccuWeather Script (via Perceptive Automation’s Forum’s)

I have been trying to find a way to get more accurate weather data from the internet. The main problem with WeatherMaxX is it pulls it’s data from the NOAA website. The NOAA only reports data every hour. So data can be out of data especially if you need current storm information. The other problem is I need to know how much rain has fallen for use with my irrigation script. Just knowing that it did rain isn’t enough, I need to know how much wand how long ago. The obvious answer is to get my own weather station. But they are expensive and can be problematic to wire up (at least for me).

WeatherUnderground offers data from “personal weather stations”! That’s almost like having my own weather station if there’s someone close to me. And they offer CSV (comma separated values) data from these weather stations. So let’s put Applescript to work here. The script isn’t complete, expect some updates as I continue to flush things out.

To get this running, put in the attachements folder of Indigo and reload attachments. Then create a startup trigger called that runs a script called getWUPWSdata(). This should start up the script and it should auto generate triggers.

[Updated 11/2/06] This script doesn’t work properly due to changes in the format of the PWS data (I think).

[Updated 8/30/04] I found that the script would occasionally error trying to get data from Weather Underground (not sure why yet) and would not adjust the time/date for the next update. I’ve fixed that so it will try again in 15 minutes.

[Updated 11/28/04] Made various changes to it here and there to make it more reliable. There’s an issue with the WU data not being complete and it will cause the script to fail. Need to fix it so it can fail gracefully and try again in 15 minutes or so. You will need to check on it from time to time to make sure it’s still scheduled.

You can download this script (and other scripts) here.