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What's New!24 Apr 2010 We are now happy with the new software and its weather display on this web site. For backward compatibility, we have retained the old text and WAP pages. Meanwhilst, have a look at the new pages. In particular the pseudo-realtime display:
19 Apr 2010 The second version of the weather display is now on the site. Have a look at this page (and all those linked to it with the buttons at the bottom) and let us know what you think. To compare, the previous version is still there at:
14 Apr 2010 The final euchre scores of the season (and the underlying spreadsheets in both formats: EuchreScores.xls and EuchreScores.xlsx). 10 Apr 2010 The new weather station arrived on 9th April (not bad considering it was only ordered on the 8th). Ian came around to help and the first sensors and the panel were installed on Friday afternoon. On 10th, the older web stuff was re-written to match the new system. There are still some "teething troubles" with the sensors, but the new weather pages are OK and should be showing the right things once the sensors have been sorted out. Have a look at:
08 Apr 2010 The updated euchre scores (and the underlying spreadsheets in both formats). A new weather station has been ordered. It's due to arrive soon and, once fitted, will allow us to get the weather information back onto the web site. The new system has much better software and will allows us to have a much better display of weather information. Watch out for further information. 14 Mar 2010 The updated euchre scores (and the underlying spreadsheets in both formats) 07 Mar 2010 The sensors for wind speed and direction have been replaced. However, while they work fine to the display unit, the processor in the loft seems unable to send their data to the internet. That was working (even if the APRS upload and the collection of statistical data was suspect) but is now dead. We now are considering replacing the whole system of weather collection and upload (and updating this whole web site) but we doubt anything will be done before the Easter holidays; however, watch this space for information. 22 Feb 2010 The updated euchre scores (and the underlying spreadsheets in both formats) 20 Feb 2010 As of 18 February 2010, the main sensors of the weather station are "down", in the true sense that they are now laying on the patio instead of being up the air. The wind direction sensor has again ceased to work -- but this time, remaking the connection hasn't fixed the problem: it seems the cable itself has rusted out rather than just the cheap aluminium connector. We're now awaiting a response from the manufacturers as to the cost of either a repair or replacement. Then again, we're still awaiting a modern version of the software that will work too! In the event that they cannot help us, we'll be looking at a replacement for the whole kit -- so the weather should be back soon (but don't hold your breath). 16 Feb 2010 The updated euchre scores (and the underlying spreadsheets in both formats) 27 Jan 2010 The updated euchre scores (and the underlying spreadsheets in both formats) 14 Jan 2010 The updated euchre scores (and the underlying spreadsheets in both formats) 14 Nov 2009 The updated euchre scores (and the underlying spreadsheets in both formats) 28 Oct 2009 The revised euchre scores (and the underlying spreadsheets in both old-Excel XLS and new-Excel XLSX) for the new season have been uploaded. 14 Oct 2009 We're back on-line! The new euchre scores and the underlying spreadsheet for the start of the new season have been uploaded. 18 March 2009 Euchre scores have been updated. 16 April 2009 The final euchre scores and the underlying spreadsheet have been uploaded. 18 March 2009 Euchre scores have been updated. 25 January 2009 Euchre scores have been updated. 16 December 2008 The weather is back on-line! The new computer is working (after a fashion), downloading the data then uploading it to the web server again. Please let me know if you have any problems with the new version but note that it will take a week for the history to accumulate enough graphics. 10 December 2008 Euchre scores have been updated. 30 November 2008 Euchre scores for the new season have been updated. 25 October 2008 Euchre scores for the new season have been uploaded. You can even download the underlying spreadsheet if you like. The builders are still working on the loft conversion. So, regretfully, the weather data is still not available. However, the good news is that we hope it will all be completed soon and the weather will be back on-line! Watch this space for details (and our pictures page to see progress). 15 June 2008 Fixed the weather computer! Weather information is now back on-line. 04 June 2008 Things go from bad to worse! Something happened to the power at home during the afternoon of 3rd June. Despite the UPS, when the power went it took one of the computers too. The machine which gets the weather data from the loft, converts it to a suitable format, then uploads it to the web site. Until we can either repair or replace this machine, weather information will not be available on the web site. Watch this space for further details 18 May 2008 Yet again we have lost one of the sensors of the weather station. Again, we seem to have lost the wind speed. I guess it's most likely to be the connectors having rusted again -- but this time the length of wire left coming out of the sensors (which is short -- hence the need for the screw connectors in the first place) will cause a further problem because there is not much left to use to make repairs. With luck, however, we will be able to get something done over half-term (week commencing 26th May 2008). Watch this space for more information. 17 May 2008
16 April 2008
05 April 2008
15 March 2008
09 March 2008
30 January 2008
01 January 2008
07 December 2007 Euchre scores updated to include loads of league matches 29 October 2007
26 October 2007
07 October 2007
27 September 2007
22 September 2007 The new Euchre season started this week. So:
06 September 2007 Added some more pictures to the gallery on Apple's web site:
23 August 2007 First, corrected a bad link or two on our links page. Those nice people at Apple have been generous to us again. They've increased our web space at mac.com to 10 GBytes so we can put more pictures up there. Better still, they're automatically updated when I update iPhoto on the Mac. Have a look:
01 August 2007 Alastair and Carolyn are back in the UK for a short visit to celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary; so we took advantage of Al's generosity and got him to help fix the weather station. The air temperature is now registering again although the rainfall is still not right. In a quiet moment we uploaded some more weather data.
25 July 2007
We have been asked why the weather archive has not been updated with all those little graphs and the rest. The main reason is that I made the mistake of updating this machine's version of Office to the new one from Microsoft (Office 2007). In short, if you want to create graphs from large tables of data don't use Office 2007! <DIATRIBE ON> A simple task which took me less than 20 minutes using Office 2003 turned out to be almost impossible with Office 2007. It used to be easy to take the downloaded raw data and feed it into the program we have to convert it into an Access 97 database. Feed that to Access 2003 and it created both an updated version and an Excel spreadsheet, took two minutes. Use the spreadsheet to create the graphs (about 15 minutes) then copy them to the web server. Not any more! Try to open an "old" Access database with 2007 and it does nothing. Nope, you've got to create a new database and then import the old one. Only problem is that if you don't want the new database to be in "My Documents", Access 2007 goes off and indexes your directory structure (or rather, that's what it says it's doing). On my machine, that takes over 5 minutes before you can save the new database. Then you can import but then you have to remove the table it created in the blank database. Then you have to save it again to export in the "old" (2003) format. OK, so once you've done that you can export the Excel spreadsheet without too much trouble. But then there's the graph creation! Selecting some columns is OK but there's now no wizard. So it assumes you want the graph in the current sheet -- you have to agree to this and then move it into a new worksheet afterwards. It also assumes you want a legend but you don't want titles for your axes. I still haven't found out how to label the each axis easily. In the case of the weather graphs, I usually have to change the axis dimensions because Office assumes stuff about the graphs. For example, relative humidity cannot go over 100% so I set the axis to go from 0 to 100 (Office assumes 0 - 120 for some reason). Under the previous version, you clicked and made the changes, then clicked OK and it changed the graph. The new version? It keeps trying to re-draw the graphs in real time! But it can't (there are obviously too many points) so it just hangs. It also fails to create the rainfall or sunshine hours columnar graphs because (it says) there are too many points -- but good old 2003 can do it! So can 2004 on the Macintosh. This is a step forward? In short, I gave up and went back to Office 2003. Database, spreadsheet and graphs for March, April and May all created and uploaded in less than two hours. <DIATRIBE OFF> Just to annoy us all some more, it seems that we've lost the air temperature sensor for some reason! Probably those cheap and nasty little "chocolate block" connectors that go rusty. Back up the tower sometime real soon (but not this weekend -- thick fog at the moment). That's now air temperature and rainfall that are suspect. Oh well, here's what we do have:
09 May 2007
18 April 2007
13 April 2007
23 February 2007
19 February 2007
05 February 2007 Euchre scores updated to include 30th January's match 21 January 2007
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