Weather

While most bloggers are using the new year to look ahead, I am not quite ready to make promises to the year of 2007. In fact, I am more inclined to looking at the past thanks to the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine.

I'd like to challenge anyone who has designed a web page to find the oldest site in the archive that they authored and post the Wayback Machine link in the comment section of this post. There are no prizes being awarded in this "contest" but I promise you can have some space for bragging rights. Feel free to include any history on the page that you feel is necessary to tell your story.

The archive contains archived web pages from 1996 to the near present. The oldest web pages I could find that I authored was from 1997 for the National Weather Service's forecast office in Sioux Falls, SD.

The above site actually originated in March 1996, but this 1997 image is the earliest I could find in the archive. Not very impressive is it? However, you have to remember that I was authoring with HTML 1.x and worried that Netscape's introduction of the blink element was pushing the envelope further than I wanted to go.

A post by Nick Lewis, Drupal and XML: Looking Forward, caught my attention. In his post he discusses work on developing the CAP XML format (Common Alerting Protocol).

In preparation for my /Nick Lewis/ trip to Washington D.C. next month, I’ve begun to develop a module that integrates the CAP XML format (Common Alerting Protocol) with drupal’s node, location, google map, category, and CCK modules.

Put plainly, the CAP format seeks:

Let me first say, I love Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Secondly, let me also say that by the time we hit the month of April, I and most others in this city, are just too darn tired of cold weather. We are ready for the warmer months that come with spring and summer. We are ready for the flowers to bloom, the brown lawns to turn green, the children to play outside, and the nice bicycle rides on the finest bicycle trails this city has to offer.

So no matter how much you tell me that it's a chance of a lifetime...I am not heading to the North Pole so I can freeze my toes off a little longer. Crazy people...

About 50 runners are scheduled to compete in this year's North Pole Marathon, covering 26.195 miles in circles on a large piece of floating ice near the top of the world.

I came across an interesting site that monitors the accuracy of forecasts from weather providers.  The site is called ForecastAdvisor.com.  The site compares the accuracy of weather forecasts from such groups as the National Weather Service, The Weather Channel, Accuweather, etc.