More flooding data hacking, Thursday January 17th

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Kevin Rose

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Jan 7, 2019, 11:36:37 PM1/7/19
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Hello all!

I made a post here a few months ago about hacking on flooding related data. The in-progress result of that is https://madison-lake-levels.herokuapp.com/. Please be aware that the site takes a while to load the first time since it's the free tier of Heroku. Source code is on GitHub.

Preview:

(Yes, Monona remains above it's Summer maximum even now, it was briefly below but it seems the 40 degree snow melt has nudged it back over the limit.)

I definitely meant to meet again sooner than this, but life sort of got in the way (new job, holidays, etc.). But I figured better late than never, so to that end I'll be at Colectivo on the Square (25 S Pinckney St, Madison, WI 53703) on Thursday January 17th starting around 5:30pm. Please stop by if you are interested and able!

I'll be working on the following, in no particular order.
  • Make it easier to see the status on past dates, right now you have to use the URL directly, e.g. https://madison-lake-levels.herokuapp.com/date/2018-08-20.
  • Improve the body text better through editing and research. Figure out if there are organizations to partner with that could help inform the body text.
  • Prototype a plot that makes it easy to compare lake levels year-over-year (how does the current value compare to the same time last year, and the year before, etc.).
  • Test different resolutions and device types.
  • Figure out domain name / HTTPS / web stuff I am ignorant about.
  • Plan for what a "release" would look like, nail down the project goals, and set up next steps.
I doubt I'll be able to do all that in one sitting alone, so once again if you feel like you want to help out please join me!

As a reminder, Colectivo serves beer in addition to coffee.

-Kevin

Greg Tracy

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Jan 10, 2019, 4:23:44 PM1/10/19
to hacking...@googlegroups.com
Congrats on the progress. This is great.


On Mon, Jan 7, 2019, 8:36 PM Kevin Rose <ke...@maypark.com> wrote:
Hello all!

I made a post here a few months ago about hacking on flooding related data. The in-progress result of that is https://madison-lake-levels.herokuapp.com/. Please be aware that the site takes a while to load the first time since it's the free tier of Heroku. Source code is on GitHub.

Preview:

(Yes, Monona remains above it's Summer maximum even now, it was briefly below but it seems the 40 degree snow melt has nudged it back over the limit.)

I definitely meant to meet again sooner than this, but life sort of got in the way (new job, holidays, etc.). But I figured better late than never, so to that end I'll be at Colectivo on the Square (25 S Pinckney St, Madison, WI 53703) on Thursday January 17th starting around 5:30pm. Please stop by if you are interested and able!

I'll be working on the following, in no particular order.
  • Make it easier to see the status on past dates, right now you have to use the URL directly, e.g. https://madison-lake-levels.herokuapp.com/date/2018-08-20.
  • Improve the body text better through editing and research. Figure out if there are organizations to partner with that could help inform the body text.
  • Prototype a plot that makes it easy to compare lake levels year-over-year (how does the current value compare to the same time last year, and the year before, etc.).
  • Test different resolutions and device types.
  • Figure out domain name / HTTPS / web stuff I am ignorant about.
  • Plan for what a "release" would look like, nail down the project goals, and set up next steps.
I doubt I'll be able to do all that in one sitting alone, so once again if you feel like you want to help out please join me!

As a reminder, Colectivo serves beer in addition to coffee.


-Kevin

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Davi P

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Jan 14, 2019, 2:57:32 AM1/14/19
to Kevin Rose, hacking...@googlegroups.com
Hi Kevin --

Good to hear from you. Great progress, thank you for the plot! A picture is much better than words, especially when the words get outdated. I'd like to see the plot on the front page, or linked more prominently. The chart of black bars is interesting (should be a bit larger I think), but the plot shows the same information in context.

Centering the year label under a tick mark can be ambiguous -- is the tick the start, middle, or end of the year? I like the year label centered between tick marks, but that can be tough to do with some plotting software. (Looks like the Bokeh axis_label_standoff attribute might work for this?) An alternative is to use 2008-01 or "Jan 2008" to clarify.

I'd be glad to work with you, but I have an IoT meetup at that time.

Thanks also for the explanatory paragraph and photo at the bottom of the page. It's nice to acknowledge the complexity of managing the lake levels.

Organizations that might help inform the body text:

Hope y'all saw this article:

--Davi



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Kevin Rose

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Jan 17, 2019, 9:36:33 AM1/17/19
to HackingMadison
Thanks for the pointers Davi! It was nice to meet you last time, it's too bad the scheduling doesn't work out this time. While being in the same space makes collaboration more fun, pull requests on the repo are always welcome!

As a reminder to others, this is happening tonight at Colectivo on the Square (25 S Pinckney St, Madison, WI 53703). I'll be there starting around 5:30 or so.

Hope to see some folks there,
-Kevin
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