The Daily Parker

I announced Friday that I deployed a complete, ground-up rewrite of Weather Now, but it looks a lot like the old version. So what's really different?

The differences between the versions go all the way down to the operating system. Version 3.1, which I launched in July 2007, ran on ASP.NET 2.0, SQL Server 2005, and a motley collection of sub-components I wrote from 1999 to 2004. The current version runs on ASP.NET 3.5, SQL Server 2008, and completely new components I re-wrote from first principles starting in September 2007.

I've got a lot of technical information about the foundation code, called the Inner Drive Extensible Architecture, over at my professional website. The IDEA handles all the nuts and bolts of the Weather Now application: messaging, database access, measurement conversions, time zones, and on and on.

The next layer up from that is the Gazetteer, version 0.5, which I wrote as an interim product to bridge between the geographical database that ran Weather Now 2.0 through 3.1, and the completely-new geographical database I'm planning for 2010.

Right under the user interface (UI) layer is another set of components dealing specifically with weather. Like the Gazetteer 0.5, the Weather 3.5 components bridge between the existing (2.0/3.0/3.1) weather data and the new design I'm working on. The combination of Gazetteer 0.5 and Weather 3.5 means that I could rewrite the application without worrying about the database.

Finally, at the top, a completely-rewritten user interface, written just in the last few weeks. (I had to write all the invisible stuff first.)

You can see an obvious problem with this, at least from a P.R. perspective: it's really hard to see any differences between old and new, unless you know what to look for.

Over the next few weeks, I'll describe in more detail what changed. I'll start with an issue that bugged the heck out of everyone, including me, for years.

Here's the top of the old home page:

There's the truly annoying measurement drop-down, showing "Aviation" as the current measurement system, and the temperature and wind readings from Chicago, showing degrees Celsius and knots, respectively. Every time you go to a new page, the application resets to Aviation, even if you tell it repeatedly you want to use English or Metric measures.

Here's the new version:

No dropdown. And, for people using U.S. English as their default language (your browser automatically communicates this information), the application defaults to degrees Fahrenheit and miles per hour.

A user from France, however, would see this:

So how do you change what you see? The new Preferences page, which not only lets you choose any available language or measurement system, but also remembers what you've chosen for your whole session—or permanently, if you have cookies enabled.

All the new code I developed for the application made fixing this long-standing annoyance almost trivially easy. Still, it's not complete yet. Version 3.7, which I hope to release this autumn, will allow users to create their own profiles, permanently storing not only their language and measurement choices, but also things like what they want shown on the home page.

There's another thing the screen shots show that you may have noticed. I'll talk about that next time.

Weather Now 3.5 is now the official, public version of my 9½-year-old demo. I first launched the site in September 1999 as a scripted ASP application, and last deployed a major update (version 3.0) on 1 January 2007.

As threatened promised, I'll have a lot more to say about it in the next few days. But I should address the first obvious question, "Why does it look almost identical to the previous version?" Simply: because my primary goal for this release was to duplicate every feature of the existing application, without adding new features unless absolutely required. It also had to run on the existing databases. That's why this version is 3.5, not 4.0 (which I hope to finish in early 2010).

I couldn't avoid some user interface (UI) differences, mainly because I used better design techniques than in the last release. And just as a matter of course, as I re-wrote each UI feature, I corrected or obviated numerous defects along the way. That said, version 3.5 has all of the features that 3.1 had, and any URLs that worked in 3.1 will work in 3.5.

I invite everyone to play with the application, and let me know about any defects or hiccups you discover. I think you'll find that it's an improvement over the last version.

The new Weather Now demo is feature-complete, meaning it has all of the pieces required for release. I will push it out to production, replacing the current demo, tomorrow morning, after I make some configuration changes to the web server it's going on. But because you read this blog, you've got a sneak preview.

Over the next few days I'll be writing about the demo, why it's completely new even though it looks an awful lot like the old version, and what I'll be doing in the next few months to improve it.

Quick update:

• The Titanic dinner at Mint Julep Bistro was wonderful. Rich's wine pairings especially rocked—as did his beef tournedos in port reduction. Mmm. Not so much fun was Metra's return schedule (featuring a 3-hour gap between 21:25 and 0:35), nor my reading of it (I did not remember this three-hour gap). The fine for taking public transit out to the suburbs (because driving to a 10-course, 9-wine-plus-apertif dinner seemed irresponsible) was $80, paid to the All-Star Taxi Service.
• I did, in fact, buy a Kindle, and I love it. I've now read three books on it and numerous articles (converting a .pdf or text file costs no more than 10c for automatic downloads), and I hardly notice the machine. It only holds 1.5 GB of stuff, but the complete works of Shakespeare ($4) only takes up 4 MB so space is not exactly at a premium.
• I may have a new release of Weather Now out today; if not, then tomorrow morning. I'll be writing over the next few days more about what's different, and why it took nearly two years to produce something that, to some, will look almost identical.
• Tangentially about my Kindle and software releases, I'm now reading Almost Perfect (hat tip Coding Horror), Pete Peterson's account of the rise and fall of WordPerfect. It's a fascinating tale of what happens when everyone in the company is just like you, and when entrepreneurs can't let go.

Finally, in a tiny piece of good news, it looks like we'll have tolerable weather Friday for my first Cubs home game this season.

Here's an interesting meteorological aviation record (METAR) code, describing unusual events in Chicago for this late in the year:

KORD 060151Z 02020G25KT 1/2SM R14R/4000V5500FT SN FG BKN006 OVC012 01/M01 A2971 RMK AO2 PK WND 02027/0118 SLP066 SNINCR 1/1 P0012 T00061011 $

Hmmm....what does all that mean?

KORD: That's Chicago O'Hare International, the offical weather station for my home city.

060151Z: The record is from the 6th at 1:51 Zulu, or 8:51 pm CDT. Twenty minutes ago.

02020G25KT: The winds are from the north (20°) at 20 knots gusting to 25 knots. This is officially known as "inside-out umbrella speed." More locally, at least in my world, it's known as "Parker-would-you-@&%(*!-hurry-up" speed.

1/2 SM: Visibility is half a mile. (R14R/4000V5500FT means on runway 14R visibility is variable betwen 4000 ft and 5500 ft.)

SN FG: There is snow and fog.

OVC012: There is an overcast cloud layer at 1200 ft above the ground, roughly around the 70th floor of the Hancock Center.

01/M01: The temperature is a balmy 1°C with a dewpoint of -1°C, just the right temperature for really heavy and wet snow. And fog.

A2971: The barometric pressure (altimeter reading) is 29.71 inches, indicating a low pressure zone.

RMK: Remarks follow. Oh, do they.

PK WND 02027/0118: There was a peak, 1-minute wind of 27 knots at 01:18 Zulu, 8:18 pm CDT.

SLP066: Sea-level pressure was 1006 hPa. Because Chicago is less than 200 m above sea level, though, this isn't the most helpful measurement. Nor is it the most interesting remark; no, that's:

SNINCR 1/1: Snow is increasing rapidly at the rate of 1 inch per hour. Yummy.

P0012: A total of 0.12 inches of precipitation fell in the last hour. Snow, though. In April.

T00061011: More precisely than reported in the "official" METAR, the temperature was 0.6°C and the dewpoint was -1.1°C.

$: The weather instruments need maintenance, no doubt because they're dumbfounded that there's a blizzard on April 6th.

So now you have a thorough explication of the current METAR code describing for pilots the weather that (a) they shouldn't really fly through and (b) I just walked my dog in. In April.

My friend in Kyiv, which was 15°C and sunny today, actually sent me a message to laugh at me. Kyiv. The capital of Ukraine. Which actually has spring weather in April.

I'm going to go cry now, and thank the Baseball Powers that Be for scheduling the Cubs opener tomorrow in Houston.

This morning, consistent with other early spring mornings I remember from years past, Chicago is having a blizzard. We're on the backside (in so many ways) of a low-pressure center, getting some fresh spring breezes (41 km/h gusts out of the north), delightful spring warmth (0°C with a windchill of -6°C), and a gentle sodden wet heavy snowfall.

In other happy news, the New York Times health blog yesterday reported 86,000 emergency room visits each year by people who tripped over their pets:

That translates into about 240 people who are treated for injuries caused by pets every single day in the United States, [a CDC] study found.

Cats are involved in some of the falls, but dogs — man's best friend — are the real culprits, responsible for seven times as many injuries as cats, often while they’re being walked, the report found.

I can attest that dogs bolt sometimes, surprising both dog and owner when the dog's increased kinetic energy encounters the owner's dug-in heels.

Sunny and 13°C in Chicago today. Result: Parker got almost two hours of walks. Other result: Pithy, pointless blog entry. Everyone wins!

The vernal equinox happened about two hours ago. Typical of this time of year, though, it's below freezing this morning in Chicago. Nature nerd Naomi has more from the wilds of northern Lake County.

Of interest to possibly no one, for the last two years I've worked on the innards of my flagship demo project, Weather Now. I'm now putting together a new user interface for it. The new version 3.5 UI, which you can see at http://beta35.wx-now.com/, looks a lot like the old one—for now.

So what's new? I've rewritten from scratch the core framework, geography and weather code, and the basic UI framework. The beta (version 3.5) looks nearly identical to the current (version 3.1) application, except that the trained eye will notice new features where the ground-up re-write peeks out.

Sometime before the end of July, I hope to finish the next version (4.0), which will have an entirely different database structure. (Version 3.5 uses the same database as the current version through a façade.)

Exciting? Probably not. But it's how I keep my saw sharp.

Spring officially begins Friday at 6:44 CDT, but today we're getting a little hint of it. Right now it's 19°C in Chicago; if it can squeak up to 22°C it will be the warmest day since October 12th.

Another trivial tidbit: because the earth's atmosphere bends the sun's rays a little, today, and not the official equinox Friday, is the day when we have 12 hours of daylight. From tomorrow until September 25th, days are longer than nights just about everywhere between the Tropic of Cancer and the Arctic Circle.

Update, 14:05 CDT: Yep, we just hit 22°C, warmest temperature in Chicago for 156 days. Why am I inside?

At 7pm CT last night, it was 16°C; now, twelve hours later, it's -8°C, a 24°C drop. Can anyone say "cold front?"

It's not the biggest twelve-hour drop in Chicago history, but it does wake you up in the morning.