Hurricane warnings coming to Google
MIAMI — Americans in the hurricane danger zone may soon be able to use Google to find out if their own home is threatened by a dangerous storm surge, the director of the National Hurricane Center said Wednesday….
Learning Python
I’m a long time C developer. Basically I figure that anything that needed to be coded could be coded in C. I still hold that belief, but 7-8 years ago I came to the realization that while that may be true, it is not always the best answer. For project reasons at work I learned Fortran and began to recognize its value when it comes to math. For other project reasons I learn how powerful simple Unix scripts can be. So basically for the last 7-8 years I’ve seen Unix scripting as a steering tool, C for text processing, Fortran for math, and Java for object-oriented and gui tasks. But recently based on a number of article from Computing in Science and Engineering (CiSE) I’ve come to learn about Python.
Python is a scripting language at its core, but overall it is much more. Python has a variety of modules and add-ons. Some basic include modules include NumPy/SciPy for math and science, CSV for delimited text, and XML for xml parsing and generation. My first Python program took me only a day or so to develop and test, it was a CSV translator. Basically it converted one CSV file into another. My next program took me another 2-3 days and it converted a gridded file into a CSV formatted file. And today, I wrote my first XML parser. Using ‘minidom’ from the xml package I was able to put together a simple parser for converting an XML file into a csv file.
All this I’ve basically accomplished over a few weeks of learning using only a handful of simple resources both online and in print. Yes I have many years of experience with a variety of programming languages, but I definitely have found Python the easiest to learn yet. Here is a quick list of resources I’ve found helpful:
- Tutorial at Python.org
- Python.org Library Reference
- Dive into Python by Mark Pilgrim
- Python/XML Howto by A.M. Kuchling
- Python XML Frequently Asked Questions by Dave Kuhlman
- Book: XML Processing with Perl, Python, and PHP by Martin C. Brown
- Magazine: CiSE issue: Python: Batteries Included Volume 9, Number 3
- Python and XML: An Introduction
- Creating XML with Python
I’ve bookmarked a number of other sites for future use but have not gotten to them yet. My next task will be to add a simple XML version of the gridded data file mentioned above, plus add NetCDF writing support and GIS writting support, namely ESRI Shapefiles. I also plan on learning howto wrap my C packages with Python binding. To put it plainly, things that I’ve spent years developing and testing in C for parsing weather related data, will all slowly be phased out and replaced with python code and modules and all opensource.
update 2008-03-19: added 2 more links
5 things airlines won’t tell you about weather delays – CNN.
Weather is weather, but where is the weather. The term ‘weather’ in relation to airline delays is getting more and more relaxed and is applied if possible to almost all delays… the article list some reasons why.
5 things airlines won’t tell you about weather delays – CNN.
Weather is weather, but where is the weather. The term ‘weather’ in relation to airline delays is getting more and more relaxed and is applied if possible to almost all delays… the article list some reasons why.
‘The Most Terrifying Video You’ll Ever See’ – Treehugger.com
High school teacher tells all simply and logically via YouTube.
Greg here shows the simplicity of the situation. He skips past the political part and lets fly the truth. The truth is, it doesn’t matter whether or not we are causing global climate change or if even the climate is changing but we do know this… at the current pace, if we don’t do anything, this ‘cyclical’ period could severely hinder the existence of the human race. We know that we will survive, or at least with our current technology the race should survive, and we know that the world on several occasions has gone through major changes and ice ages and such. So if we know we have the technology to survive, and we think we have the technology to possibly prevent global climate change doesn’t it make sense to just go for it. Like the video says, if we spend the money and nothing happens, then well we’ve wasted a bunch of money, if we don’t spend the money and anything happens…. well you can watch the video.
‘The Most Terrifying Video You’ll Ever See’ – Treehugger.com
High school teacher tells all simply and logically via YouTube.
Greg here shows the simplicity of the situation. He skips past the political part and lets fly the truth. The truth is, it doesn’t matter whether or not we are causing global climate change or if even the climate is changing but we do know this… at the current pace, if we don’t do anything, this ‘cyclical’ period could severely hinder the existence of the human race. We know that we will survive, or at least with our current technology the race should survive, and we know that the world on several occasions has gone through major changes and ice ages and such. So if we know we have the technology to survive, and we think we have the technology to possibly prevent global climate change doesn’t it make sense to just go for it. Like the video says, if we spend the money and nothing happens, then well we’ve wasted a bunch of money, if we don’t spend the money and anything happens…. well you can watch the video.
More Simple weather related fun
Here is another simple do-it-yourself weather contraption:
instructables : Anemometer
I thought this was great…. this is what happens when people get board and snowed in.
instructables : Anemometer
Self pride
Wow, I read engadget everyday, who ever think that I’d be working on a project that they post. I’m working on NOAA’s Hurricane Research Division’s (hrd) side bringing the data into a visual app we developed.
link: NOAA to send unmanned aircraft into hurricane – Engadget
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