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Show HN: A world map of 24x365 average temperature “fingerprints”

weatherspark.com

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Re: Show HN: A world map of 24x365 average temperature “fingerprints”

#31

Post by tenuousemphasis »

jacobn wrote: post #6
crancher wrote: post #2

The density and type of ads masks well presented information. I don't see the ads but am left unwilling to share links to the site where I sure would otherwise.

Yeah, the ads are a double-edged sword. We've been running this site for... ten years? And for the longest time it languished with some Google Adsense ads on there, making enough to keep the servers running, but not enough to invest more effort in it. Then we recently switched ad provider, and the site grew a bit as covid started easing up, revenue doubled with the potential for more, and boom it's worth it to invest…

A developing alternative to advertisements is micropayments using HTTP 402 status and Bitcoin over the Lightning network. https://github.com/lightninglabs/aperture

Re: Show HN: A world map of 24x365 average temperature “fingerprints”

#32

Post by dzhiurgis »

tshaddox wrote: post #30
gmurphy wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Double agree with this suggestion - as I've split my life between hemispheres, weatherspark has been enormously useful for explaining relative climates to new and old friends, but I always have to edit the comparison graphs myself to put summer in the middle before sharing so you can actually compare the differences.

Same here. Funny enough they seem to have done the adjustment for the similar cities feature (“far-away foreign places with temperatures most similar”) but when you click to compare them the charts are all unadjusted.

Same. I want to move from Auckland, NZ to Azores and it's not super clear whats the climate like (tho comparing some other charts seems Azores wins).

Re: Show HN: A world map of 24x365 average temperature “fingerprints”

#33

Post by dzhiurgis »

You probably already know this, but crossing international time line stops rendering fingerprints on one side and starts rendering on another - can't seem to have both on screen.

Also - any chance to have this as a table? i.e. so you can find places with bestest weather? So far looking at map Sidi Ifni Airport stands out for some strange reason.

Finally the range at 18-24 degrees should be potentially more finely grained. The difference of 6 degrees is huge.

Re: Show HN: A world map of 24x365 average temperature “fingerprints”

#35

Post by jacobn »

vlovich123 wrote: post #28
jacobn wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the ads are a double-edged sword. We've been running this site for... ten years? And for the longest time it languished with some Google Adsense ads on there, making enough to keep the servers running, but not enough to invest more effort in it. Then we recently switched ad provider, and the site grew a bit as covid started easing up, revenue doubled with the potential for more, and boom it's worth it to invest…

I'm curious. What do the hosting costs & tech stack looks like? I'm assuming you're mostly just serving some static content & some server costs to generate the images periodically? Is there anything else?

Every page & image (they’re all embedded SVGs) is generated from scratch using raw data on every request - with the number of languages and units supported it gets quite unwieldy when pre-generating (we had a mediocre experience w that on statisticalatlas.com).

In order to render in a timely fashion the sections & graphs are rendered in parallel on a decent sized instance.

Re: Show HN: A world map of 24x365 average temperature “fingerprints”

#36

Post by Smoosh »

NelsonMinar wrote: post #8

Congratulations on the new thing! I've loved Weatherspark ever since y'all were doing very innovative presentation back in 2013 or so. One suggestion; have you tried re-centering Southern hemisphere calendars so summer is still in the middle? The "red dot in the middle" is such a clear pattern, no reason you couldn't have it in Australia too.

I was going to make this suggestion too.

While we are making suggestions, here's two more:

* pop-up with location name when hovering over a fingerprint.

* adjust colours in temperature scale to personal taste. And/or adjust temperature range in each category (my freezing cold may be another person's chilly).

Re: Show HN: A world map of 24x365 average temperature “fingerprints”

#37

Post by OOvsuOO »

This is awesome! I can compare climates of my home to others in the world and see weather patterns all over. It's mind blowing. All though a visual medium rather than auditory (text is based on sound), which would be impossible to do the same. Or a lot harder. I think it's impressive.

Re: Show HN: A world map of 24x365 average temperature “fingerprints”

#38

Post by jerryluc »

This reminds me of an art installation at the university in Trondheim, Norway. It's using a glass ball as a lens to burn holes in a tin plate. Every year the tin plate is changed and displayed on the wall inside the university.

https://www.trondheim.no/en/art/art-in-public-spaces/art-sun...

Re: Show HN: A world map of 24x365 average temperature “fingerprints”

#40

Post by rhn_mk1 »

Smoosh wrote: post #36
NelsonMinar wrote: post #8

Congratulations on the new thing! I've loved Weatherspark ever since y'all were doing very innovative presentation back in 2013 or so. One suggestion; have you tried re-centering Southern hemisphere calendars so summer is still in the middle? The "red dot in the middle" is such a clear pattern, no reason you couldn't have it in Australia too.

I was going to make this suggestion too. While we are making suggestions, here's two more: * pop-up with location name when hovering over a fingerprint. * adjust colours in temperature scale to personal taste. And/or adjust temperature range in each category (my freezing cold may be another person's chilly).

Absolutely. What happened to all the below-0 degrees of cold? -2°C is mushy, -10° is crispy, and then it gets very cold. It's important!

EDIT: now I see the last interval is just very large: -9°C to 0°C. Something around -5°C would work better, as this is roughly where the physical properties of the world change, because road salt stops working.

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