Next is a page that contains the CURRENT and HIGH / LOW temps. In the past I have located some text based data files on the NOAA.GOV website. I’ll have to dig up my notes one this. From time to time NOAA moves those files and changes the format, so those notes might not end up being that helpful. It is somewhere to start.
This page here, has a pile of nice detailed information (see compressed screen shot) but does not contain everything I’m looking for: Recent WX from Bremerton National Airport.
XML DATA!. XML is something I know more about, than I really care too, but it is a portable, easily parsable and text data format. I’ve not yet investigated the contents here, but it does look promising!
What is a “Weather Reader”? Well, it’s like a “News Reader”, but it’s purpose is to check the web for local weather conditions and display them on a computer screen. For this project I’ve revived an old Averatec laptop, installed Ubuntu 9.10 on it and started to write some PERL.
Beat up old Averatec AMD64 laptop, only 1/2 the keyboard works and the battery is shot.
Weather Data
Where to get the weather data? Personally, I like to go to the source. The public source at NOAA.gov. This is a government agency, paid for by my tax dollars (and yours too if you’re a US tax payer.. of which only 53% of working people in the US are, but that’s another story. So, free for the taking as far as I can tell, and am concerned. Which is good, because the real heavy work is up to me. Finding a URL is one thing, using it for something productive is another thing.
To see what I’m looking at as a source without clicking a bunch of links, here is a screen shot of my indented HTML victim:
Seattle Weather from NOAA website.
Now, the only part that I’m interested in is this one:
I’m sure some of you are asking, “WHAT’S THE POINT!?!?!?”. Well, I have several, not all atop my head. As an avid motorcyclist, weather is almost as import to me as mariners and aviators. Weather might look good for the moment, but around here anything can happen. It’s good to know what the forecast is. And not just in one location. Since I transit two area micro-climates commuting to work, knowing that weather will be at the end points of my journey are are a minimum requirement. Plus, I’m lazy. Not so lazy I won’t write a program to do this, but lazy in the larger sense, of I just want to hit a button and see all the data I want, not have to wait for the Weather Chanel to decided it’s ready to dispense it’s forecast, or hunt around on various local news sites. Nor, frankly, have to click on TWO hyperlinks to see what weather will be like HERE and THERE. Nope, I’m just too lazy for that, so I’ll spend 8-32 hours figuring out a way to save myself 2-3 minutes a day (I didn’t say I’m always smart, but always lazy). Remember; “Laziness is the father of invention!”. Digressing….
The Plan
The plan is to use PERL, run every 30 minutes from 5 AM-> 1 AM, and grab the weather page shown above. Parse out only that which I want, and then re-construct my own page on my own server. It’s a basically a mashup page of what I want to see.
Checking the source code of the page, I see that, ugh, NOAA did not supply and useful DIV markers that I can use. So, this will be a rel brute-force process to detect, select, extract and re-construct the page of my dreams. Yes, I can be easily entertained.
Snagging that out of the documents for 2-3 locations will get me what I want. It should look something like this, but the example here does not have any stylesheets applied, it’s a direct rip and mash.
Sample mashup, this was done manually. It at least proved the concept.
There are a couple of problems with that page though, it’s going to take up too much real estate on the final page. Here, it’s almost too large to view on my laptop’s main screen. So, some embedded CSS is in order. This hear overloads the td type, making any text found within anytd rendered at 80% of the normal size. This also overloads creates a style named headish that I is applied to the section titles:
The result of that very small change, gives me a smaller visual footprint, and formatting at little more pleasing to my sensibilities:
A little more hammering around in the stylesheet, and adding a CURRENT and High/Low temps forecast for the day. A little closer to the desired mockup. I still need to locate a suitable news feed to process: A little closer to the desired mashup page.
There seems to be no lack of technology press on this piece of crime-code, that is set to go off on April 1st. The largest concern is that nobody seems to know what the Command-and-Control (C&C) computers will instruct the infected systems to do on April 1.
For myself, and the company I work for, we are safe for the technical exploit, since we do not run MicroSoft systems, and non-MS systems by all indications are perfectly safe from becoming part of the botnet.
Conficker is a program that is spread by exploiting several weaknesses in Microsoft’s Windows operating system. Various versions of the software have spread widely around the globe since October, mostly outside the United States because there are more computers overseas running unpatched, pirated Windows. (The program does not infect Macintosh or Linux-based computers.)
The speculation is that the bots will try to access a pool of 50,000 different domains (something we can determine by examining the code) looking for it’s C&C. The problem is that defensivly registering the 50,000 domain names is something that nobody seems to want to, or capable of doing.
Other crimeware uses similar technolgy to look for different C&C systems based on a predictable algorythm, this is nothing new or groundbreaking. The size of the pool is by far the largest I have heard of, so that is new.
There are likely man different ways that the nentire network can be thwarted, if the registrars, backbone providers and ISP’s all co-operate (fat chance) to null-route any of the 50,000 domains that might be registered and directed to the C&C systems. That alone makes me think this is much ado about nothing.
Should people running computers infected with Windows ignore this potential threat. Obviously they need to take the possiblity their computer is infected, VERY seriously. If they are unable to switch to a operating system without so many security issues, then they should at least make sure their computer is not exploited.
Later today I will compile a list of reliable links to instructions/software for mitigation the threat on your own computer. As far as the massivly parallel monster system this botnet might become on April 1st…well.. we won’t have to wait long to find out if this is a boy craying wolf, or the real thing.
