octave

2 minutes ago, Marty_d said:

I haven't tried escargot... Anyone had them? 

 Yep, just tried off someone else's plate. Mainly tasted of the garlic it was cooked in. I wasn't moved enough ever to order them myself.

Whilst I am sure there are people on the fringe who want to remove humans from the equation, this is not common, and these people are inconsequential in the debate.

Advocating for clean and renewable energy is about ensuring our future while allowing us to enjoy the benefits of modern technology. 

Advocating for EVs is not about restricting people's freedom to personal transport; in fact, it is quite the opposite.    Wanting clean and renewable energy is about ensuring energy without some of the downsides.

15 minutes ago, old man emu said:

But filter coffee is my preference.

Ours too, although I make the occasional espresso on my manual lever machine.  One of the beans we roast is a naturally decaffeinated bean, which we drink pretty much only in the evening.   Like an interest, you just have to find "your" crowd, whether it is tuning vintage motor bikes, fishing or Morris dancing

Warning, don't get me sucked into a discussion on coffee. My wife and I are long-term coffee nerds.  We buy green coffee beans and roast them ourselves.  We are very far down this rabbit hole. At the moment, we are roasting Ethiopian late-picked beans, which means that the beans do a little fermenting before being picked. It makes for a pretty fruit and berryish winey brew.

Just now, red750 said:

So rising or falling sea levels could be because of those same reasons.

Well yes, if you are just relying on pictures, however, this is not how mean sea level is calculated. Mean sea level is measured through a combination of gauge data from around the world and satellite altimetry.

The data is readily available, and the question I would pose is, if you believe the data is incorrect, then what do you believe is the reason?  Are  NASA  and CSIRO etc., incompetent or lying or perhaps part of a plot to bring down capitalism because they are such hippies?

How Do We Measure Sea Level?

1 hour ago, red750 said:

Any 2 pictures that compare sea level must be taken at the same point in the tidal cycle. 

More importantly, the sea level is not the same throughout the world.  Factors such as wind, currents, precipitation and  the distribution of the world's mass. 

Are sea levels rising the same all over the world, as if we're filling a giant bathtub?

https://sealevel.nasa.gov/faq/9/are-sea-levels-rising-the-same-all-over-the-world-as-if-were-filling-a-giant-bathtub/

No. Sea level rise is uneven, the two main reasons being ocean dynamics and Earth’s uneven gravity field.

First, ocean dynamics is the redistribution of mass due to currents driven by wind, heating, evaporation and precipitation. For example, during La Niña events, sea level goes down because some rain that usually occurs over the ocean shifts to land, and the same phenomenon produces low latitude currents that redistribute seawater. Regional climate cycles, like El Niño and La Niña, and longer-term effects, like the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, change ocean circulation, which changes sea level.

A visualization of Earth’s gravity field using Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) data. Gravity is determined by mass; Earth’s mass is not distributed equally, and it also changes over time. Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Texas Center for Space Research

Second, because the distribution of Earth’s mass is uneven, Earth’s gravity is also uneven. Therefore, the ocean’s surface isn’t actually a perfect sphere or ellipsoid; it is a bumpy surface. As the land-based ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica continue to unload their mass (lose ice) from far above sea level and far from the tropics, that mass reaches the sea in the form of meltwater that is then redistributed along Earth’s gravity field.

15 minutes ago, old man emu said:

I'm all for the reintroduction of the cubit.

I think we should definitely adopt the "smoot" unit of measurement.

With any new website, there will always be tweaks and improvements to be made; this is true of all software and websites.  I am sure that there are many legitimate complaints, as there was and still is with the old website.   Most news articles I have read seem to be full of hysteria and fail to actually fact-check.   "There's no rain data" some people have been reported as saying, and here I am looking at rain data.

Some people have suggested that the new site was about a sexy, sleek new look; however, having talked to someone in the know, it seems that the old site had many vulnerabilities.  These were exploited during a cyber attack in 2015 

 Australian Bureau of Meteorology hacked by foreign spies, cybersecurity report reveals

I believed that the old site caused a similar controversy when it replaced the one before in 2020.

Here is an article that I feel is more balanced than some of the rage-bait articles.

Storm in a teacup or dark clouds: why do people hate the BoM website redesign?

6 minutes ago, onetrack said:

I find the Farmonline Weather website more user-friendly, having a better layout,

I do like this radar display, large, zoomable and draggable, unlike the postage stamp-sized old BOM radar. I do find I have about 4 links to different weather services, depending on what I am after.

When you say "wolfie is in you" you don't mean like this, do you?

1 minute ago, nomadpete said:

(Sorry, Wolfie is in me)

 Yeah, Wolfie will do that. I am sure you resisted

18 minutes ago, nomadpete said:

There is no way to bring back the good ole daze of USA.

What are the good old days anyway? Segregation, the McCarthy Reds under the beds era, lynchings, Vietnam, WW2 or that golden age when you could beat your wife and children?

1 hour ago, rgmwa said:

This doesn't make much sense to me.

It means no chance of rain, doesn't it?  It might seem odd when there is no rain predicted, but  I assume those headings are there all the time and they are populated with data. If there is no rain forecast, then the columns are populated with zero mm. What should it say?. If I look at Brisbane at 5PM, there is a 25% (low ) chance of at least 9mm and a 50% chance of at least 4mm. 

I don't think this way of expressing the probability of rain has changed much. Here is the predicted rainfall from the old BOM site.

https://reg.bom.gov.au/jsp/watl/rainfall/pme.jsp  You need to click on the chance of rainfall button.

I am not sure if it is any better than the new site.  I guess we want to know if it is likely to rain, and if it does, how much rain is likely.

I think both old and new sites can display forecasts to various levels of detail

These are both from the new site

This is from the old site.

It just tells us that there is a high chance it will rain up to 4mm without predicting whether it will be more likely to be at the high end of that prediction or the low end.

In any case, I don't see these differences are big enough to drive someone to end it all.   There are other weather services, such as Williweather or Weatherzone or Weatherwatch or Elders, among others, as well for the time being, the old.

BOM site. I read an article where a man said he wanted to smash his phone with a hammer. This seems to be a little over the top, and I expect it was a bit with a little help from the rage-farming media outlets.  

2 minutes ago, old man emu said:

With a bit of playing about with it, I'll get used to it.

I believe in you OME 🙂

So GON, do you think in order to make America great (whatever that means) it is necessary to allow health insurance rates to double and in some cases, triple, whilst giving tax cuts to billionaires and simultaneously tearing down part of the White House to build a crass gold ballroom and naming it after himself?

26 minutes ago, facthunter said:

I would assume the LARGE number of people who are Not impressed were regular users of the Older site.

There is a well-known phenomenon whereby whenever there is a change to a website (or pretty much anything else) many people find it temporarily unsettling. You only have to think about the history of these forums.  When there has been a rejigging of these forums, there have been several people who didn't like the change and wanted to go back to the old system.  Then, sometime down the track, when more changes are made, this existing system becomes the one they mourn.

Of course, the new system may feel temporarily more awkward to use.    I can relate to this; many of the software packages I use are regularly updated. The user interface often needs to be updated for functionality or to take advantage of improved technology.

Most of us are not good at remembering our past experiences with using sites.   I would imagine that the first few times we used the old  BOM site, we probably found it difficult and not very intuitive.    I am very open to real criticisms, and I am sure it is not perfect; however, most criticisms seem to be around things being in a different place.  It just takes a little time to get used to it. The alternative is the freeze it as it is. 

I believe that the opposition to the new site is being stoked a little by the media, which loves a controversy.  I saw somewhere, I can't remember the news outlet, that was asking people who were outraged to contribute. Some of the complaints are laughable.  I read where a woman was outraged because she believed they had taken away the buttons on the radar map (64km 128km etc). Yes, they did, but they did replace them with an infinitely adjustable zoom function (between biggest and smallest). Someone here, I think, complained of the colours on the radar map. I would suggest that whatever colours you choose, you won't please everyone.

Anyway, as I say, the phenomenon is well known.  

"According to researchers, the main reasons behind resistance to change are perceived loss of control and perceived dissatisfaction.

Familiarity bias is another reason people dislike redesigns. It refers to a mental phenomenon where people opt for the more familiar options, even though these often result in less favourable outcomes than available alternatives. Familiarity bias was first described by Daniel Kahneman and it’s a well-documented heuristic (shortcut) our brains take that makes us prefer familiar experiences.

The Endowment Effect is a concept in behavioral economics that refers to how people tend to assign a greater value to an object that they own, rather than an object that they don’t. In the case of the redesign, this phenomenon can lead users to prefer the existing version and experience aversion towards the new one. The status quo bias is another cognitive bias similar to the endowment effect; people have a preference for the current state of affairs. More specifically, people tend to accept and prefer the default option instead of comparing the actual benefit to the actual cost. As a result, even if the redesign is ultimately improving user experience, users will — at first — show a preference for the design they’re used to."

https://uxpsychology.substack.com/p/why-do-people-hate-redesigns

Sorry to be a little tedious about this, but this is my observation about the new local page in this case, Gilgandra.

https://www.bom.gov.au/location/australia/new-south-wales/central-west-slopes-%26-plains/o245094990-gilgandra

There appears to be a wealth of information on this page that, in the past, needed you to click through to other pages.

Here comes the tedious bit - you have been warned!

After the place name, we can choose to look at today, the next 7 days forecast and the past (72 hours) 

The current temp, the feels like temp a general forecast for heavy rain. Under that, we have the predicted max and overnight min.

Next to that, we can click on the radar and weather maps (or we can scroll down.

We have a predicted rainfall (looks like you should not put the washing out)

Next choice of temp and rain, wind, humidity or show all of these things (the choice is yours)

We then have an hourly forecast for the temperature and rain.

Under that, the weather maps for rain, wind, temp  or more weather maps ( I won't bore you with those choices)

What is missing on this page? 

There has been a lot of talk about the radar map.    This is one of the things that, to me at least, seems like chalk and cheese.   The new map can easily be maximised to full screen as opposed to the old one,which is tiny and can only be enlarged on your phone with a loss of resolution (unless I don't know how, happy to be schooled on this)

A couple of days ago, I posted links to the radar sites from the weather services.  

USA -   large size zoomable and draggable

UK met - large size, zoomable and draggable

European met - large size, zoomable and draggable

Australian BOM (new), large size, zoomable and draggable

Australia's old BOM site does look pretty antiquated and small, and can only be navigated between preset zoom levels and by sidestepping to the next radar station.

2 hours ago, old man emu said:

It is the both the site navigation and display that are poor, leading to inconvenience.

Is it objectively poor or just slower until you get to know it?

8 minutes ago, old man emu said:

but no accurate information on wind direction and rainfall areas

Again, all the information that was available is still available.  Some of it has not been in been incorporated into the new site, but the links take you back to the old site for the time being. It is true that with any change, there can be a little frustration with it being navigated to differently. Why can I find these things, and others can't?

Here is the rainfall info.   I don't think you should have trouble with this because the link takes you back to the old site at this stage.

Here is some of the info on rainfall.

https://www.bom.gov.au/climate/rainfall/

https://reg.bom.gov.au/climate/maps/

Latest Weather Observations for Camden   

Everything that was available is still available. Pages that have not been added to the new site are linked back to the old site for now.

Historic (72 hours) wind, you can choose from your nearest weather station.   Perhaps (if I am remembering where you live,it might be this one.

https://www.bom.gov.au/weatherstation/australia/new-south-wales/68192. This is on the new site. From here, you can get the same 72 hours past the temperature, rain  humidity or you can combine all of those things into one page.  

On the main page is the current wind speed and direction.  You get this by clicking the wind button between the temperature and humidity buttons.   This gives you information from the last recorded observation.  In the case of data from 10 minutes ago and the forecast for future winds was generated  32 minutes ago.

36 minutes ago, old man emu said:

here is the website my son created for a business that started from scratch recently.

With the greatest respect to you and him, there is a massive difference between a business site and a sit like BoM.  A business website can be manually updated as new information becomes available.  The BoM site must update automatically, things like Temp, Rain, Humidity, wind speed and direction, etc This makes it much more problematic. 

My son's partner is a UX person, this is the person who designs how these sites work.  Her last contract was with the NZ Lands Department. The problem is that several separate data sets, for example, own the land, the history of ownership and most importantly, earthquake risk and past works on the land, such as excavation and filling, etc.   This may sound easy, but it his a highly paid, complex job 

I think that some people are infuriated because suddenly it is different. I get it I share that frustration. I will bet that when the old site came online, people complained.

Look, I am not saying you must like it, but when someone says that a particular set of information is no l; longer available when clearly it is that is a different matter. 

5 minutes ago, rgmwa said:

I can't fly in the rain.

Yep, that's true. I remember when we moved from the city to the bush in 1990. As city folks, we defined good weather as sunny and dry. We soon learned that to our farming neighbours, dry and sunny was not necessarily good. With time, we polished up our small talk so as not to annoy the farming folk.  "Good bit of rain last night" was safe, if you really wanted them to like you,  just add  "just need a bit of follow-up rain"

3 hours ago, rgmwa said:

Yes, no problem with that. I just prefer to know what the chance of rain is, not what it isn’t.

Glass half empty rather than glass half full (depending, of course what you are hoping for)🙂

My natural curiosity made me look at other countries' weather sites, especially radar. Compared to all these sites, BOM's old site does seem a little dated and certainly harder to operate. Drag and zoom does seem to be favoured over defined steps to the next radar site over or defined clicks between levels of zoom rather than a smooth zoom to the desired  magnification.

US National Weather Service

UK Met Office

European Radar

Old BOM Radar

18 minutes ago, spacesailor said:

No electricity or water to house ! , gas lighting & gas , or coal fire cooking , a big hook over the fireplace, to hang one pot or kettle. 

We used to live int shoebox int middle of t road"

The chance of rain does have some science behind it.  There are also different ways of expressing the same prediction. For example, there is an 80% chance of marital relations with Mrs Octave tonight or a 20% chance of not getting any; it means the same thing.

There is always a conundrum in communicating information to a varied public. Someone will always be unhappy. In Britain, there was a campaign in 2011 to do away with percentages and use narrative terms like "slight chance" and "scattered"

Probability of precipitation

Just looking at the how the chance of rain is expressed.

In my location next Friday at 5am

There is: 

a 50% chance of 0mm (50%  it won't rain)

a 25% chance of at least 1mm

a 10% chance of at least 3mm

On the old forecast site, it just gives a 75% chance of rain on that day.

I can't see why anyone would be baffled by this.

11 hours ago, rgmwa said:

Apparently tomorrow we have a 100% chance of no rain. Seems like a strange way to describe it.

Is it strange? It depends on what the question is.   If the question is what the chances are of it not raining (so I can go out in the boat or for a bushwalk), oh, 100% great or what are the chances that rain will impact my activities  (0% -great). Both of these are logical.   I think the complaint is that they used to do it this way, and now they are doing it a different way.  I don't think many people would be confused and not understand what it means.

29 minutes ago, nomadpete said:

Back when they went off grid, Mr & Mrs Octave would have loved prices like these.

You are not wrong about that.   I clearly remember back in 1990 that a 60w solar panel was $595. Now, for about $300, you get over 400W, and when you consider inflation, the price drop is enormous. One of the things we struggled with back then was lighting.  The best choice at the time was quartz halogen. Each 20 W bulb was $13 and was better at producing heat than light.  Today's LED lights would have been fantastic.

We don't have a house battery, but we did get a quote.  The problem is that our bills our so low that the payback time was 20 years, which is far longer than the warranty. As far as backup goes, our power seems to be amazingly reliable. I can honestly say we have not had a power cut longer than seconds in the last 8 years. That could change in the future, I guess.  For emergency backup, we might consider something like this  

EcoFlow DELTA 2 Max Portable Power Station,     obviously it would only power the fridge and lights, perhaps an induction hotplate. It would also double as a power supply for camping