Getting open data out of ECMWF, drunk driving, and mangled English
We dig into a classic faulty machine translation, we learn how to get some data out of ECMWF, and then drop an unexpected (?) statistic about drunkenness in traffic.
You have arrived at the mid-week hump. Have a $container of $beverage and enjoy some reading before you speed along with the rest of your life.
New articles
The Wind, a Pole, and the Dragon
At often, the goat-time install a error is vomit. To how many times like the wind, a pole, and the dragon? Install 2,3 repeat, spank, vomit blows. What does that even mean? Nobody knows, but I'll collect some guesses.
Full article (2–5 minute read): The Wind, a Pole, and the Dragon
What the Meteorologist: Announcing wxpull
For a few weeks, I'm going to try to get my weather information from a custom weather report that looks like this for each day:
29 M 82 84 85 81 87 83 0 0
This tells me there is no risk of rain, and even though the temperature is most likely going to be comfortable (north of 12 °C), there is large uncertainty in the forecast and it could be as cold as 8 °C, so the children will need an extra reserve of layers to daycare.
Oh? How I get the data for it? It's a long adventure involving trying to get open data out of ECMWF. Get the full story here.
Full article (15-32 minute read): What the Meteorologist: Announcing wxpull
Flashcard of the week
In collisions between cars and pedestrians, where either the driver or the pedestrian is drunk, which one is more likely to be drunk, and by how much?
This is a statistic from Traffic Engineering (Roess, Prassas, and McShane) which surprised me. I'm even a little hesitant to share it, because drunk driving is such a big problem.
The pedestrian is 3× more likely to be drunk than the driver.
While still acknowledging the problem of drunk driving, it's a reminder that not only drivers are part of the traffic – pedestrians are too. We should work toward greater separation of heavy traffic from foot traffic.
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