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Blue Skies -- weather images
``` Date: 29 Mar 1994 14:56:53 GMT From: alans@engin.umich.edu (Alan Steremberg) Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.gopher Subject: Announcing Blue-Skies
Blue Skies is now available for PowerPC!
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WELCOME TO BLUE-SKIES!
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A unique weather display system has been created, dubbed Blue-Skies. Written by University of Michigan student Alan Steremberg under a National Science Foundation grant, Blue-Skies is designed to provide an extremely user-friendly interface so that users with a minimal computer background can easily obtain the information they need.
The Blue-Skies program offers users relatively fast access to literally hundreds of real-time weather and environmental images. Among its innovative features is the incorporation of a file transfer protocol based on the University of Minnesota's "gopher" (though we call it "groundhog") service. Blue-Skies is a gopher client, with interactive graphics capabilities current Macintosh gopher clients do not support. The gopher protocol allows for easy control of the graphical user interface, the addition of special topics that can be dynamically updated without altering the client.
WHO CAN USE BLUE-SKIES
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Blue-Skies was developed with K-12 schools in the State of Michigan as its primary target. At this time, however, no restrictions are being placed on its distribution or use. If non K-12 use grows to the point where the K-12 schools see significantly reduced service, access to the Blue-Skies data will be restricted.
HARDWARE REQUIRED
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Blue-Skies runs only on color or gray-scale Macintosh computers. It will not run on the Mac+ or Apple II computers. Plans are underway to port Blue-Skies to IBM-PC machines running Microsoft Windows, but this software will likely be unavailable until 1995.
If you are not connected to the Internet, you will need a modem. We recommended a fast modem of at least 9600 bps, because many of the images are large and take considerable time to transfer over slow phone lines.
SOFTWARE REQUIRED
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Blue-Skies is a TCP/IP application which requires a TCP/IP network to be properly functioning prior to Blue-Skies being launched. A TCP/IP network connection can be directly connected, as in the form of a campus ethernet backbone, or the required TCP/IP connection can be established via dial-in service.
If you are connecting via a modem and phone line, you will need another layer of communication software. This layer will consist of either a SLIP (Serial Line Internet Protocol) or PPP (Point-to-Point-Protocol) connection from desktop to service provider. Contact your local network service provider to determine which protocol is supported.
Recommended Reading: The Internet Starter Kit for Macintosh by Adam C. Engst published by Hayden Books.
This book contains a good foundation for the technical aspects of network connectivity, as well as a thorough map to information resources on the Internet. Included with the book is a copy of Apple's MacTCP software. We STRONGLY recommend you run MacTCP 2.04 or higher; early versions of MacTCP have a bug in the part that figures out how to talk to other machines on the Internet (the code dealing with the DNR, or Domain Name Resolver, does not work correctly.)
Users should also have NCSA telnet, a free public-domain communications program that will allow one to access the normal text-based Weather Underground data (the UM-WEATHER program that you are running now.) NCSA Telnet is included in the Internet Starter Kit.
PPP MichNet, the service provider for Michigan, supports PPP network access. MacPPP was developed by Merit Network, Inc, and is freely available.
MacPPP can be retreived with anonymous ftp:
machine: merit.edu directory: /pub/ppp/mac
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Network Authorization
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A new user of the MichNet network will need to obtain a network authorization account. Application paperwork is found in the file "application.txt" or Network_Application_Form.txt, depending on where you are reading this file.
or contact:
Merit Network, Inc. Attn: Merit Authorization Service Account Manager 2901 Hubbard, Pod G Ann Arbor, MI 48105
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HOW TO GET THE SOFTWARE
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Using Gopher
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If you are using an old version of Blue-Skies or the freely available Turbogopher program, connect to: groundhog.sprl.umich.edu (port 70), change directories to "Software", then double click on the "Blue-Skies_1.0.sea.hqx" file. It will then be transferred to your computer. The file is over 200K in size, so it will transfer rather slowly (about 3 minutes at 9600 baud if you're using Blue-Skies 1.0).
The "hqx" extension on the file means that it has been compressed using the freely available BinHex4.0 software; you do not need to worry about uncompressing the file, since Blue-Skies and Turbogopher will do this automatically for you.
The "sea" extension on the file means it is a "Self Extracting Archive". This means that the file is really an archive of several files. Simply double click on the rectangular "Blue-Skies.sea" icon, and the files containing the latest Blue-Skies release will be extracted (a dialog box will appear asking you where to put the files on your hard drive). Once the files are extracted, you may throw the "Blue-Skies.sea" file in the trash, if you wish. It is no longer needed to run Blue-Skies.
Using Fetch, Xferit, or NCSA Telnet
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One can also get the software using one of the freely available Macintosh file transfer programs such as "Fetch", "Xferit", or "NCSA Telnet". Connect to: madlab.sprl.umich.edu. When it asks for your user name, type in "anonymous". When asked for your password, simply type your email address.
Now you are connected to our ftp file server.
Change directories to "pub/Blue-Skies".
Before transferring the file, be sure to set the transfer mode to binary. Finally, get the file "Blue-Skies_1.0.sea.hqx". You will need to run the freely available "BinHex 4.0" program to uncompress the file.
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What BLUE-SKIES currently offers:
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Interactive Weather Maps - A unique feature of the Blue-Skies program is the availability of Interactive Weather Maps, which contain a weather image (e.g. radar map with fronts, satellite image, etc.) in which all textual information on current conditions and forecasts is embedded. There are cities plotted throughout the map, and as the computer mouse passes over the cities, the current conditions (temperature, wind direction and speed, etc.) are shown on a status bar. If the user clicks on the city, the latest National Weather Service forecast for that city is displayed. The user also has the capability to zoom in on selected regions of the country, allowing more cities to be displayed and allowing greater exploration of weather phenomena.
The interactivity allows students to explore basic questions of meteorology, such as "What are the changes in winds, temperature and relative humidity across a cold front," or "What is the relationship of precipitation and clouds to low pressure systems?"
International Weather Maps - Color maps of temperature and precipitation are generated every 6 hours for most of the world. These maps will soon be interactive, and display the monthly climatological data for several thousand cities across the world when one clicks on the city.
Weather Animations - Weather is, of course, a decidedly non- static phenomenon. The Blue-Skies program acknowledges this by allowing access to Quicktime movies of the latest several hours of satellite imagery, as well as precipitation and frontal movements, temperature changes, and wind field changes. The animations are created and updated hourly on an IBM RS/6000 workstation using Apple software. Currently, the animations cover a 24-hour time period.
Ozone Hole - While the display of weather information is the primary goal of Blue-Skies, there is no limitation to the breadth of information which can be disseminated via this technology. Recent images of the percent of normal ozone column, as reported by the TOMS satellite is made available as it is released by NASA. These images empower the students and teachers to observe the raw data at the earliest opportunity. The data are released in an unverified form, which force the participants to evaluate whether the results seem plausible, given the risk of erroneous data in the raw data stream.
Air Pollution - All the daily Acid Rain precipitation chemistry data from the Utility Acid Precipitation Assessment Program will be made available. This allows students to interrogate a single day across sites, or a single site across days. Data in a tab- delineated format can be downloaded to your local computer by clicking on the icon for a selected site.
Famous Weather Events - Inasmuch as nature seldom cooperates with course planning a special folder containing archives of selected weather phenomena has been created. This folder contains images and data corresponding to hurricanes, tornado outbreaks, snow storms, and other materials useful for classroom projects. The imagery included in this archives will be used to support curriculum activities available on the system.
Curriculum Materials - Ideas and information on how to use Blue-Skies for teaching in the K-12 classroom.
Exploring the Internet - A gateway to the amazing diversity of the world-wide computer network called the Internet.
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FEATURES OF THE SOFTWARE
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Once a user selects an image and pulls it over the network, he or she can:
1. Save the image to disk;
2. Print the image to black and white or color printers; and/or
3. Copy images from Blue-Skies into a report or presentation.
An Auto-Launch feature allows one to load images at a set time each day. This is useful, for example, when one wants to load the large animation files early in the morning so they are ready for presentation at class time.
One can add "bookmarks" to frequently-used images and forecasts by means of a "Startup Items" file.
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WHERE TO GO FOR HELP
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We are primarily in the business of providing support on how to use the Blue-Skies software itself. We realize that for those of you who do not have a TCP/IP network connection in place, getting one working can be difficult. In particular, getting macPPP set up correctly can be a challenge. We STRONGLY urge you to establish a TCP/IP Intenet connection yourself, by consulting support staff of your network provider. We simply do not have the resources to be troubleshooting everyone's unique networking problems.
Questions can be sent to:
blueskies@umich.edu
or
The Weather Underground University of Michigan Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-2143
or (last resort) call 313-936-0491 or 313-764-4584
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CREDITS
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Dr. Perry Samson: Director of Weather Underground project Jeffrey Ferguson: Program Coordinator Alan Steremberg: Main author of "Blue-Skies" Macintosh program. Jeff Masters: Blue-skies content coordinator; Author of UM-WEATHER Tracy Mullen Image generation and UNIX programming coordinator Mike Monan: Macintosh and UNIX programming Michael Kamprath: Macintosh programming Neeraj Shaw: UNIX programming ```
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