ready for winter?

I know, seasons change, get used to it…

I am a three season person – Spring, Summer and Fall, then like most good bears I hibernate in my office til the robins start chirping outside my window again.

It’s not like I 100% abhor Winter, more like 90% or so. There was a time in fact I enjoyed getting out on a brisk Winter day and take a long X-country ski through the lodgepole pines of northern B.C. Sadly, a sports injury had me unloading my skis to a friend after an admonition from the doctor that skiing and golf would put me in a wheelchair – killjoy!

Since then the combination of cold, snow and sciatica all seem to come together about the end of November and linger til the last mound of dirty Ottawa snow disappears into the storm sewers. But Winter can be a very productive time for me, with lots of crafty projects, a few writing bits to work on and the usual I wonder if I can do that in python to keep me occupied.

For the last couple weeks I have been exploring putting up a weather cam in my office window. You would be surprised how little there is on the web about building a webcam app that a. saves locally and b. ftp’s the image to your webserver. Add to that I wanted a time overlay.

Welp glad to say I finally figured it out – Woot! Except the first shot happened to be me hunkering down at the keyboard. Whoops, hopefully nobodies eyeballs were hurt in that exchange.

I will be tweaking the app for sure but look for the cam to appear sometime before Spring on my weather page. In the meantime I will lay in a supply of Snickers Bars and Dr. Phils and get cozy for the next few months.

I wonder if my beard will be down to my knees by then… hmm…

Cheers!
Mark