The domain name wx-now.com went live on 11 November 1999, 25 years ago today. The earliest known Wayback Machine capture of the old Active Server Pages site was in September 2000; this screen shot from January 2001 looks a bit closer to what it looked like when it went live:
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In 2008, Katie Zoellner gave it a facelift that lasted pretty much until March 2022, when I completely overhauled the app, writing an entirely new UI and refactoring about 50% of the internal code.
I still have all the old source code. It's trippy to look at how I wrote 25 years ago. Even trippier that I've had an application running in the wild continuously for that long.
The sky above Chicago has nothing but sun this morning. It won't last—the forecast for tomorrow night points to July-like atmospheric moisture and epic rainfall—but Cassie and I will enjoy it as much as we can.
Maybe I should stay away from these news stories until the rain starts for real:
- Michelle Goldberg reminds all you Hannah Arendt fans that fascism takes time to establish itself, so we have perhaps a couple of years to emigrate if the XPOTUS takes power in January: "The transition from democracy to autocracy is a process, not an on-off switch."
- Jay Willis shakes his head that "Jeff Bezos doesn't understand that he is the problem:" "[T]he possibility that Americans might also not care for a rich guy leveraging his power to compromise political coverage in the middle of an up-or-down vote on fascism seems not to have occurred to him."
- Dylan Byers takes to Puck to muse about Bezos's side of the argument: "Ultimately, Bezos wants to own, and Lewis wants to manage, a paper staffed by a team that supports their vision for semi-nonpartisan, future-proofed profitability."
- Jeff Jarvis explains in the Columbia Journalism Review why liberals are infuriated with the media: "Journalists like to say they write the first draft of history. Too often that means they ignore history. Today I urge journalists to reread Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism so as to understand her historical antecedents."
- Inae Oh expands on why people not already in the bag for the XPOTUS might hate election coverage right now: "Trump’s menacing language—a constant for almost a decade—rarely draws the notice that Garbage-gate has received. To call this imbalance typical both-sidesism fails to adequately convey the failures of the media in 2024."
- Robert Wright congratulates Elon Musk on becoming America's first true oligarch: "Musk is far and away the most dramatic example of concentrated power. By virtue of his undeniable intelligence, creativity, and drive, he has wound up with an impressively diverse portfolio of influence."
- Micky Horstman, writing an op-ed in Crain's, wants public transit in Chicago that people actually want to use: "Other cities have figured out how to run a transit agency post-pandemic. Chicago can, too."
But after all of this, yesterday Jennifer Rubin made "the case for election optimism." So I'll end this post with her argument:
Americans need to retain perspective, muster up patience, let the vote counting proceed, avoid bestowing MAGA legal challenges credibility they do not deserve and insist on bipartisan recognition of the winner. We can do this, America.
Yes, we can.
We officially set new record high and high-minimum temperatures yesterday, getting to 28°C (82°F) around 4pm and not dipping below 20°C for 24 hours. More autumnal weather seems likely tomorrow, but today we're still having more of a June-like day—except for the 5 fewer hours of daylight.
As for the coyotes, apparently around this time of year, coyote parents kick their pups out of the nest, so we should see more juvenile canis latrans in the area until the young-uns establish their own territories or, ah, fail to do so. We have some in the park 400 meters from my house, and they regularly use the UPRR embankment as a highway, so I'm looking forward to seeing a few.
Forecasters predict a high temperature of 27.2°C (81°F) in Chicago today, 1.6°C (3°F) warmer than the previous record of 25.6° set in 1999. Moreover, the temperature last night only got down to 19°C, just a smidge warmer than the high-minimum temperature record set in 1946, which will likely stand as tonight's low will probably stay above 20°C.
Those are normal temperatures for mid-June.
Even better: those are 1991-2020 normals for mid-June, which are slightly warmer than the normals in use when I was a kid.
On the other hand, we've had a really lovely, warm autumn this year. If we continue to have slightly-warmer summers followed by much-warmer autumns and mild winters, as we've had for a couple years now, I think we might be OK. But wow does it suck for Arizona.
Since the beginning of Weather Now back in 1997, I have had total control over what users see on the home page. That changed today.
Now, once you have created a profile by logging into the app with your Microsoft account (O365, Live ID, Xbox, doesn't matter), you can change your home weather list. To add a station, simply go to any Current Weather page and click "Add to home page". This will take you to your Profile page, where you can see the entire list on the "Home page" tab.
Once there, you can remove any places you don't want. (The app populates your custom list with the default list the first time you add anything.)
Have fun with this! I know I will. I still have other features to write while my real job goes through a transition, so keep watching for more Weather Now updates.
The sun is just coming up over the trees east of my office, I'm having a bagel and coffee, and I'm checking the forecast for today's 42-kilometer walk:
Right now we've got 9°C at Inner Drive Technology WHQ, meaning a chilly start to the walk. But with the forecast high at our end point of 22°C with dewpoints under 6°C all day, and just a few clouds (bottom panel), I couldn't ask for better.
Here we go!
Cassie and I have gotten a full hour of walks today with the promise of more to come, as it's our third sunny day in a row, but today got above 19°C (though only up to 16.5°C at Inner Drive Technology WHQ). I had two minor bugs to fix at Weather Now, but mainly I've had meetings today, so getting outside with the dog felt great. And tomorrow: a 42-kilometer walk.
Meanwhile, with 18 days left before the election:
Finally, the last Chuck E Cheese in Chicago has gotten rid of its animatronic band, opting for video screens instead. The youth of America weep.
Now if the crew repairing every single stair in my courtyard (which seems to involve hitting them all repeatedly with a hammer) would just go the f--- home, I could get some more work done.
I've just pushed Weather Now v5.0.9057, which has some of the coolest shit I've built into the app, ever. Introducing: maps and charts!
At my real job, I did an evaluation of charting tools for the app we're developing, and determined that Syncfusion had the best balance between ease and power. Boy, does it ever. I managed to get a community license for Inner Drive Technology and spent the last few days playing with it.
There are also a couple of bug fixes, and one change to cut down on all the screen-scrapers that have been hitting me (you have to register to get archival data).
I invite all Daily Parker readers to check out the new features, and please give me feedback. I think it may need some usability fixes, and I still have a lot of work to do on personalization—particularly around people selecting their preferred measurement systems.
Still, I'm jazzed at how quickly all the features came together, and how easy Syncfusion's tools are. I hope y'all enjoy the new toys.
Following a coronal mass ejection on Monday, tonight's aurora forecast is epic:
Unfortunately, I have an event just outside the Loop that ends around 10. By the time I got home, loaded up the dog, and drove to a place without streetlights, it would be around 1am. So no photos; but maybe I'll see some aurorae when I get home.
We'll see. Fortunately, we have had perfectly clear skies for 4 straight days, with no significant cloud cover forecast until tomorrow afternoon.
Aurorae peak at local midnight, which tonight in Chicago will be 00:38. I'll check around 11pm.
I didn't get up at 2am to drive to Mt Rainier like one of my friends, but I did spend almost all day outside yesterday. Cassie and I met friends (one human, one dog) in Elmhurst for a 9-kilometer walk down the Prairie Path in the morning. And my car flipped 30,000 km on the way back from the walk:
That 2.1 L/100 km (112 MPG) is for the entire life of the car. In fact, I used some gasoline yesterday for the first time since June 15th, so this year my car is getting closer to 1.5 L/100 km (151 MPG)—and of course infinite MPG for over three months. And of course, 30,000 km since 22 December 2018 is an average of 14.2 km per day, which is exactly how I avoid using gasoline most of the time.
Finally, yesterday evening Cassie and I went to Spiteful Brewing to enjoy the 24°C weather:
Today we're heading to the dog beach and the Dock, which closes for the season tonight.