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Weather & Information Images (WX-IMG)

Sunday, December 27th, 2009
by W8JKC

I have updated my WX-IMG products and have included the WWV image in this release.
To add these images to your site please see http://www.w8jkc.com/copythis.php?q=1
You are free to add them to your website, Facebook, MySpace or similar profile, including web signatures.

Also included in this release is my simple email address spam blocking image script. It is very simple to add to any page, but requires basic knowledge of HTTP URL structures. However it is explained completely on the page linked above.

I have changed the methodology behind the Weather Spotter Image too, it used to refresh the data every time the image was accessed or loaded, which means every time somebody viewed a page that had that image in it, the information would be retrieved again. This works great, however now that more people are using that image I am using way too much bandwidth and I am sure the NWS and NOAA did not appreciate me requesting the information so many times. This is especially true because they usually only update the information once every 24 hours (around 6am). I have changed this to only request and update every 7 hours, which means 3 updates per day. Currently the update times are (EDT) 0700, 01400, and 2300hrs each day. I believe this is the most effective use, because we have had some afternoon and some evening storms.

If you have any questions or concerns you may email me at: Email Address
or you may simply leave a comment below.

12 websites you should know about for Canton / Stark County, Ohio

Thursday, April 9th, 2009
by W8JKC

Here are 12 websites you should know about and bookmark for Canton City and Stark County, Ohio.
This list appears in random, non-specific order.

Stark County Convention and Visitors Bureau – Visit Canton Stark
Pro Football Hall of Fame and Festival – HOF and HOF Fest
Stark County Amateur Radio Emergency Service (ARES) – WD8AYE
Canton Amateur Radio Club (CARC) – W8AL
Quad County REACT – QCR
ScanAmerica.Us – Stark County
Akron / Canton Airport – CAK
19 Action News – WOIO
Stark County WeatherSCW
Canton Repository – CantonRep
Stark County Government – Stark
Canton City – Canton

To get your website included in the next list, please comment below with a link or email me justin@helin_w8jkc.com
Note: Your comment may not appear when you submit it due to spam filters, but I will still be able to see it and approve it. Please do not submit it more than once. To be considered, site must have content relevant to the Canton or Stark County area.

WX-JS Officially Released

Thursday, October 9th, 2008
by W8JKC

I am now officially releasing WX-JS, a free project that allows you to add dynamic Weather Alerts to your website through a simple javascript code.

This project coincides with my WX-IMG project, and uses the same data from an RSS feed over at weather.gov, which is updated about every 5 minutes.

Currently, these scripts grab the feed from weather.gov everytime the script is accessed, and the more people who use these projects, the more bandwidth it will use from my ISP, and to weather.gov

The next version of these projects will include a 5 minute server side cache of the data from the weather.gov feed, and will tell the browser to cache the image or data for same expire time as the feed cache.

This will allow more people to use my script, with less server load on my end, along with bandwidth to me and to weather.gov

To use my WX-JS script: Visit this page for instructions.
To use my WX-IMG script: Visit this page for instructions.

Current Users of my WX projects:

http://www.wd8aye.net

http://www.myspace.com/tricountyrescue

http://www.myspace.com/cstechnical

http://www.kd8gpm.com

W8JKC.com

Monday, October 6th, 2008
by W8JKC

I have just completed the setup of an new URL (http://www.helin_w8jkc.com) for my blog!
Redundancy for search-engines and old bookmarks and links will be available till Jan. 1st 2009.

Please update your links/bookmarks before then as http://helin_w8jkc.wcatnews.com will stop working on that date.

Internet Connection Upgraded

Friday, July 11th, 2008
by W8JKC

I talked to AT&T today regarding some long distance charges on my bill, and they offered me an upgrade to my current DSL connection from 3 MB Downstream to this: Downstream Speed: Up to 6.0 Mbps
Upstream Speed: Up to 768 Kbps for just a few dollars more than I was paying before.

Users to this site, and other ones that I host should notice an increase in speed and transfer rates.