Saturday, August 06, 2011

All I Need To Know

I'm getting teased by my friends for having a tissue-paper airplane, and for making confusing statements like "I hope it rains on Friday so I can go to the park." It's a little odd being in an operation that depends on perfect weather, when many of the real pilot skills are about dealing with imperfect weather. It's also a new thing for me to look at a GFA calling for scattered cloud at 10,000', and have that be unsuitable weather. It's similar to the adaptation you make when you go from VFR flying to IFR flying. In that transition you look at weather that was once unquestionably unflyable and you have to further analyze it to see if the icing en route and the ceilings at destination might still allow flight. I guess in every operation you divide weather into "totally unflyable," "great," and "hmm, lets see if there's a way we can do it." Those two dividers slide around a long way, depending on the nature of the operation and the experience of the pilot.

I was amused by these URLs, which I discovered by accident when I idly typed my guestion of the day into Google's search bar.

http://goingtorain.com/
http://isitgoingtoraintomorrow.com/
and
http://isitgoingtoraintoday.com/

Large print, simple, binary, no complicated decoding. It even detects where I am correctly, except when I'm on VOIP Internet at a shack beside a runway and it thinks I'm in Montréal. I think single purpose URLs like that are hilarious. I regularly visit Sometimes Red, Sometimes Blue and I have no idea why. I don't know whether Am I Awesome serves more than one answer, but it said I was "Very" so that's good enough for me.

9 comments:

Louise said...

One of the weather links correctly locates me down to the small town I live in, the other two get the wrong county. Admittedly the countries are Wales versus England which probably makes it close in Canadian terms, but in terms of the difference in weather they can differ significantly.

Anonymous said...

The first of those links correctly puts me in New Jersey, though it's about 60 miles too far south. The other two both put me in Wilmington, Delaware (80 miles SW of me) and don't agree between themselves on the chance of rain there (one says 60%, the other 30%). I'll stick to the National Weather Service and just enter my ZIP code.

PaulB said...

Am I awsome? ... I just got a "Yes" from it.

And despite the weather forecast for heavy rain tomorrow, the web site predicts NO (30% chance)

Sue said...

(1) site located my nearest large city and said yes (2) tomorrow - yes (3) today - no, which contradicts #1 (4) red (5) damn right. Thanks for the links.

Cirrocumulus said...

1) "Maybe" in Glossop, Derbyshire.
2) "Yes" in Glossop UK
3) "Yes" in Glossop UK
Why Glossop? Is my ISP looking for a remote place to hide some bodies?
It had heavy rain this morning and can expect light rain tomorrow.
4) Blue
5) Damn Right

Roundo said...

All three got my location right - its a very big city - but Yes, No and Maybe. The Farmers Almanac is more certain.

Anonymous said...

1. Exeter, Devon (really wrong) - Maybe
2. London (wrong) - No
3. London (wrong) - No
4. BLUE
5. Always - Hhmmmm........

Feedjit currently has me in Cheddar - where the cheese comes from - Somerset, but sometimes I'm in Salisbury, Wiltshire and once in Bristol, wherever that is these days!! I'm really quite near EGHI, Southampton.... and so is my 'puter!

PaulB said...

well, it did rain, but just a quick shower... so it did better than the official forecast on the TV!

Colin said...

My favourite single-purpose website is http://whatthefuckshouldimakefordinner.com/

(Should not be accessed near people who don't like dirty words)