Weather Resources

With Hurricane Dennis about to make landfall I thought it would be appropriate to post a number of weather links that I like to use when planning my flights. Some of them have excellent facilities for tracking and projecting tropical storms and hurricanes.

Basic

More Advanced
If you like weather charts and want to see satellite imagery and projection charts, the National Weather Service (NWS) is brilliant.

  • This link to the NWS’ Aviation Weather center has much of the basic information you need for flight planning. Take a look at the satellite links to see big weather systems such as hurricanes, etc.
  • There is really no rhyme or reason to the site and associated URLs, if you poke around long enough you can eventually find what you’re looking for. But for hurricanes and the like, go here (I clicked on “News” from the link above and then “National Weather Service” from the “Top Story” on that page). Anyway along the top you’ll find links to current major storms. Clicking on “Hurricane Dennis Graphics” (as of today) will give you some very useful images showing actual and projected paths for the hurricane.
  • Finally here is a legend to help decipher all those symbols you see on the charts above.

Aviation Specific
All the links below have a bent toward aviation in particular:

  • The AirNav site (here is KLZU – My Home Airport) is specific to each airport and you can get relatively recent ATIS (Automated Tower Information Service) or AWOS (Automated Weather Observation System) which is basically just airport local weather. The ATIS will offer some extra info such as runway in use, etc. but for this post, the weather’s the thing.

These links require either that you have a pilot’s license or that you are a member of AOPA.

  • AOPA’s weather information is provided by Meteorlogix – so this is a nice perk of being a member
  • I make use of DUATS for my overall flight planning

The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou

2/5 stars

Can anybody tell me why I like Cate Blanchett? I mean she’s not typically attractive, the first time I saw her was in the movie “The Aviator” and I was very taken by her portrayal there of Katharine Hepburn. In this quirky movie again I found her character to be odd but very likeable.

The movie itself seemed completely undirected. I haven’t done any research into any grand purpose or message that it was trying to portray, but it drifted around a lot. Mich liked this movie a lot more than I did, she enjoyed its lack of predictability. I would suggest that if a logical flow of events (even if only in retrospect) is your thing, then this movie may not be for you.

Odd and I had no idea really of what the point of the story was supposed to be…

Excalibur

5/5 stars (I’d rate it even higher but that 110% stuff is overused..)

Excalibur is, quite simply, the best movie in cinematic history.

When I first saw this move way back in the early 1980’s I was stunned. Most of the actors were unknowns or at least unknowns to *me*. This extraordinary movie weaves together all of the major pieces of the Arthurian legend from the sword Excalibur and Merlin through the creation of Camelot to the quest for the Holy Grail to the devastating final battle with Mordred.

One may quibble about the historical accuracy of the costumes (most notably the armour in which respect, I must admit Monty Python’s Holy Grail movie was probably much closer to the period). But the sheer wonder of that epic story being presented as a coherent whole combined with a spectacular musical score and the innocence and growth of the players make this the best film that I have seen to date.

The Aviator

4/5 stars

Who knew Leonardo DiCaprio could act? Like most folks I am intrigued by Howard Hughes. To be that wealthy and powerful and to ultimately be such a victim to your own fears and insecurities. The story is a fanciful portrayal of Hughes’ from his first appearance on the Hollywood scene up until the quasi-victorious flight of “The Spruce Goose”.

Also featured in the film was Cate Blanchett who made quite an impression as Katharine Hepburn. Especially enjoyable was Hughes’ meeting the Hepburn clan. Also taking down Alan Alda’s Senator Ralph Owen Brewster character in Senate hearings was dramatic but exultant.

Be Cool

3/5 stars

A fun romp. Uma Thurman looks very appealing even as she is terribly under utilized in this movie. I’m still swooning over her from her explosive performance in Kill Bill Volume One (not to be confused with the not so good Kill Bill Volume Two).

I think the primary appeal of this movie is that the character played by John Travolta – Chili Palmer – is just (cliche/pun warning) so cool. Nothing fazes him, he has a goal and whatever obstacles get in his way he resolutely engineers his way around or, if necessary, through them.

The movie is far more comedy than action. Best served as a rental with a cold beer.

Bizrate.com and some funny e-tailers

I was attempting to purchase a camera over the Internet. There seems to be a stock issue with this so some of the major e-tailers have already sold out. So I decided to take a look at some of the other offerings out there. In the past, I have encountered bizrate.com after I have made a purchase and thought this would be a reasonably reliable way to determine if some e-companies were trustworthy. I was a little disconcerted when I tried to find a source for this camera:

Working from the Bizrate.com search results :

I then checked out www.dbuys.com. This was a little shakier since I found nothing on them with the bbb and I found some conflicting reports about them in the newsgroups. I eventually decided to go ahead with them but they didn’t do SSL. This doesn’t bode well for an Internet storefront – it means they either couldn’t get a certificate from verisign – a bad sign that – or they are too cheap/naïve to get a certificate which means they don’t have any concern about my data. Sending my credit card info through in the clear just isn’t a good idea. Further checking their site I can see that they have a “VeriSign Secured” logo. This shows that their SSL certificate is supposed to be valid from Nov/03 through Nov/05. But try to access their site via https and you’ll find the connection is refused.

Then I decided to check out . I immediately noticed that, while the site is laid out slightly differently (graphics are modified), the actual deal for the camera was identical, right down to the confusing accessory kit offerings (though the price was different by $1). A quick “WhoIs” check shows that both IbuyDigital.com and dbuys.com are owned by the same company. Further, even though IbuyDigital.com also displays the “Verisign Secured” logo, it is also incapable of accepting https connections.

Next, www.digitalMegastore.com, surprise! same deal again as the previous two, no https ability (even though it also purports to have a valid verisign certificate. This time the WhoIs search yielded a different owner name (though with the same city / zip code) and the price was once again slightly different but the product offerings (the packages and the accessories) were all similar again to the previous two. The difference being that the price now ended in 77 cents.

Then came www.ibuyplasma.com which I didn’t even bother to check using WhoIs since that was listed in the administrative contact information section for the www.dbuys.com site. At least this site didn’t claim to be “Verisign Certified” as the previous ones did.

Checked out www.realdealshop.com. At least in WhoIs it purports to have a slightly different owner (still in Brooklyn, NY with a zip of 11223 instead of 11231), but the offerings on that page still look eerily similar to all of those above. No “Verisign Secured” logo here either and SSL connections were refused. For smiles’n’giggles I went as far into the checkout process here as to create my account and saw that the form is IDENTICAL to the one on dbuys.com.

Checked out www.bestpriceaudiovideo.com and though they had more notes indicating that “Store Pickup Available” as well as being “In Stock” well… they were out of stock..

Finally, with www.pcnation.com I was able to find a seller with both stock and SSL support. But a quick scan of the newsgroups and checking www.resellerratings.com and megapixel.bizrate.com curbed my enthusiasm for this retailer.

As an aside this has greatly reduced my opinion of bizrate.com. Having so many storefronts for a single retailer represented in their results greatly reduced my confidence in using them as a search vehicle for products.

Hitch

4/5 stars

Just saw the movie “Hitch” with Will Smith.

Largely a chick-flick but enjoyable anyway. I *really* enjoyed some of the earlier scenes where Will was more suave and sophisticated but even the more tortured moments were carried off quite well. Kevin James’ moments on the screen were somewhat more cringe-worthy but then I’m not a great fan of slapstick. Still, you won’t be disappointed that you rented this one.

Toronto Attractions

Thought I’d post some thoughts on interesting things to do while in and around Toronto (Ontario, Canada).

The Distillery District is new and I haven’t heard much about it yet. I intend to visit there the next time I’m in town.

Also new (to me) is Scenic Caves Nature Adventures. I’ll be checking this out too this year and post a review when I get back. The website is challenging to navigate but I think it’s because they are assuming a lot about how their operation runs. For instance it’s not clear to me at all if the attractions are all for one price or a bunch of loosely collected separate outings. A phone call will sort that out soon enough. Check out the inexplicably hard to find video.
Addendum: I spoke with someone at the scenic caves and they assured me that for park admission cost (about Ca$17) you can do the scenic caves thing, but for the full price (about CA$ 95) you get the Canopy walk, the suspension bridge and the scenic caves. I think this is going to be fun.

Also of interest are the old standbys of cycling along the gorgeous Martin Goodman Trail. I’ve ridden many portions of it many times and have always been impressed at having this wonderful path available to me spanning the Toronto waterfront from end to end of the city.
It can get a little dicey cycling the trail in the Queen’s Quay Terminal district where you’ll need to get on the road and merge with the somewhat chaotic traffic. But if you’re not in a hurry, you can always walk your bike along the shopping district’s sidewalk and enjoy a little peoplewatching.

Also new to me as a fairly new pilot is the idea of visiting the Toronto Island Airport to rent a plane. I’m pretty sure that, holding a US Certificate, I’ll need to hire an instructor to come with me for now. I understand that there are a couple of ways to become legal in Canada based on that certificate. I’ll go this easier way first and see if it’s worth it to me to navigate Canada’s somewhat more bureaucratic airspace. Then maybe I’ll apply for a more permanent solution. My other choice is to rent my plane in the US and fly in, but I think it’s a good idea to get training in this slightly different airspace anyway. I spoke with Mel at Island Air Flight School & Charters. It sure is expensive to fly in Canada but some things were not as bad as I expected. For instance I was under the impression that you had to pay user fees for each take-off and landing, but Mel tells me that’s not so.

Found an interesting site that talks about downhill mountain bike rentals etc.

I’ll post more ideas as they come up.

Alchemy Firmware for WRT54G

Head on over to WRT54G.com for a ton of info on this incredibly flexible 802.11g wireless router.

This is where I found the Alchemy firmware update for my unit. The two most appealing things about it for me were:

The ability to specify “Services Priority” for various types of packets (bittorrent, skype, http and https) to bulk, standard, express or premium and,

The ability to assign specific IP addresses based on MAC address. This way I could configure the router to use DHCP and let my home network stay dynamic. I want to open up the 6881 port for my main machine so it can listen for incoming bittorrent messages and I wanted to only open up the one address. But I try to stay away from static addressing because I need the practice and experience dealing with machines whose IP addresses can and will change occasionally.