Events

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...

Just a few more notes about last Saturday's 43-kilometer walk to Lake Bluff. First, some photos, including the obligatory Baháʼí Temple photo from about 14 km in: And the Green Bay Trail in Glencoe, Ill., around 27 km: The walk felt much easier than previous years, so I ran the numbers to find out why. For starters, this year I took longer (6:32:38) to get to 42.2 km than in 2020 (6:20:32) or 2021 (6:17:41)—but last year I took even longer (6:41:36), so that's only part of it. This year was the coolest...

The most interesting news I have today comes from the Chicago City Council's Committee on Pedestrian and Traffic Safety, which voted 8-5 yesterday to lower the city's default speed limit from 30 mph (48 km/h) to 25 mph (40 km/h). Advocates have wanted this change for years. One influential group, People For Bikes, ranks Chicago 2,279th out of 2,579 cities in the US for bike friendliness almost entirely because of our speed limit. The change would instantly catapult Chicago to the top quintile of their...

Jim Fallows points out that XPOTUS backers and really horrible people Peter Thiel and Elon Musk surely know that the XPOTUS is losing it, so we need to think about what that means should JD Vance become VPOTUS: Here is a chain-of-being that doesn’t get enough attention: Peter Thiel and Elon Musk were two of the co-founders of PayPal. They are the duo you see above, nearly 25 years ago. Peter Thiel created JD Vance as a political figure. Vance met Thiel when Vance was a student at Yale Law; he went to...

Moving this annual 42 km walk to October really helped: I'll have more to say about this later today or tomorrow. Right now...I'm a bit sore, but a lot less sore than I was last time.

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: Paul Krguman explains how the tariffs the XPOTUS wants to impose on us could "wreck our...

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...

As I've done a few times since 2020, I'm planning to walk a marathon distance this coming Saturday. Last year I got to 42.2 km in 6:41:36; this year I hope to break 6:30. The weather forecast looks incredible for Saturday, which makes me optimistic: Starting nice and cool with the dewpoint staying below 9°C all day is perfect. Combine that with light winds out of the north (middle panel) and crystal-clear skies (bottom panel) and you've got perfect conditions for a long walk. Last year it got up to 26°C...

A contractor punctured the iron casing around the Queens-Midtown Tunnel in New York City, but fortunately thousands of motorists escaped a horrible death: Workers for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which owns the tunnel, first noticed the curious downpour in the eastbound tube around 10 a.m. Leaks are not unheard of, and at first it appeared routine. An initial report indicated that officials suspected that the water was coming from a broken main on the Queens end of the tunnel. But there...