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Posted 2004 Dec 05

I’ve re-enabled Comments after making some changes to combat spam. We’ll see how it goes. I’m sure it’s just a matter of time…

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Weather for the Masses

Posted 2004 Dec 04

Just noticed this WIRED article about how the NOAA is now providing all their weather data via XML. Forecasts, Current Observations, and more are available. There’s even a SOAP interface! Way to go NOAA.

Great timing, since I just finished the first pass on my Quicksilver Weather Plugin. My plugin parses the raw METAR data which is nothing more than space-delimited text. All the data is positional and requires using lookup tables to make it meaningful. Also, my parsing was pretty brute-force as there is no built-in support for Regular Expressions in Cocoa/Objective-C. So, now, instead of a custom (and fragile) parser, I can use the standard (and self-describing) XML feeds. They even include suggested icons!

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Y: The Last Man

Posted 2004 Dec 03

Ooh. The latest issue of the excellent series, Y: The Last Man came out on Wednesday. Reading Y is like watching the first season of 24: gripping.

I must admit, I’m intrigued by the developments with Dr. Mann’s character. Up to this point, her role has really been overshadowed by Yorick and 355. Oh, baby, not any more.

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Primer

Posted 2004 Dec 03

Saw Primer last weekend. Finally, a real hacker movie. Primer is fast-paced and suspensful with an “indie” feel. Most SciFi movies now-a-days are really just Action movies. Not Primer. Instead of special effects, there’s deep technical jargon. Instead of Virtual Reality, there’s a digital readout from RadioShack.

Primer is reminiscent of Pi and Memento. It reminds me of something else that I can’t quite put my finger on. It’s not quite David Lynch and it’s not quite Philip K. Dick (except maybe Ubik). Whatever it is, it’s certainly good SciFi.

If you’re looking for bisexual Macedonians or witty hobos, though, you’ll likely be disappointed. Or not.

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Quicksilver Weather Plugin

Posted 2004 Dec 03

This is my first pass at a weather plugin for Quicksilver. It uses METAR data to display the current conditions.

I kept wanting to be able to quickly see what the temperature was—say, right before walking out the door. Quicksilver is perfect for that: a couple of keystrokes and it’s done. There’s a fair amount of additional data available from the NOAA, but I’m currently only showing the Temperature and Dew Point.

This plugin is my first foray into Cocoa programming. So, I know there’s about a dozen other applications that display the weather, but I just wanted to try my hand at Cocoa, Xcode, and Objective-C.

Download [MYWeatherPlugin.qspkg].

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Fancy

Posted 2004 Dec 02

Meeting you here.

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Hello, Vid boi

Posted 2004 Dec 02

I’m on the way up. Promise.

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