Played around with a recipe I found online that includes two of my favorite things, beef tenderloin and Makers 46. This is actually just a test blog to see if everything is working since 1&1 is a steaming pile of crap and made me almost hate wordpress…
Let’s talk about hashtags.
As powerful a tool as Twitter is, users are clearly holding its potential back due to either a lack of understanding of hashtags or a blatant disregard for what hashtags do. Here is an explanation from Twitter.com:
Hashtags: Categorizing Tweets by Keyword
- People use the hashtag symbol # before relevant keywords (no spaces) in their Tweet to categorize those Tweets and help them show more easily in Twitter Search
- Clicking on a hashtagged word in any message shows you all other Tweets in that category
- Hashtags can occur anywhere in the Tweet – at the beginning, middle, or end
- Hashtagged words that become very popular are often Trending Topics
In my opinion there should be additional bullet-points:
Lets break this down using the following graphic. Click to get a full screen version.
This is what a fully populated Hootsuite account looks like. I use HS for several of my consulting projects but the one I’m focusing on for this blog is Weather Decision Technologies.
Many of you who read HamWx are associated with weather in some capacity or another. Likely you are familiar with state weather monikers as applied to hashtags for Twitter. For example, #okwx is a hashtag you can follow in order to see what Meteorologists, Emergency Managers, Enthusiasts and those who play Meteorologists on television have to say about the weather in Oklahoma.
The trouble with #okwx, as well as many other states with active #wx hashtags, is that Twitter users see a message that originates with an #okwx hashtag and RT it without killing or changing the tag. This clutters the feed and ultimately slows ones ability to decipher information being relayed that is NOT related to the original RT but carries the #okwx hashtag. Make sense?
In addition, we now have people who have created bots that announce the current weather information for a specific area. For some reason they thought sticking the #okwx hashtag on the output was a fine idea. It is not.
I am not knocking bots. I like them. I subscribe to two. The key word here is “subscribe”. If I am interested in an hourly weather update from the Norman reporting station, I’ll subscribe. I do not want to see it in my #okwx feed though.
I hope a few people will see this and maybe think twice about quickly retweeting hashtags. Ultimately I’d like this to reach some of the bot folks out there as well so they might understand the frustration those of us in the weather industry have when trying to gain access to information as quickly as possible.
So I have a lake event coming up and I was checking average high and low temperatures for a future date in time. This proved to be a very difficult task in itself but fortunately I have access to more weather data than Michael J. Fox can shake a stick at so I pulled through.
Anyway, as I looked over the data this time of year I was amazed to see it’s 82 degrees on my patio right now and tomorrow it will be a record-breaking whopping 90-something!
This is good and bad. I don’t want to “Spring” right into summer-like temps but at the same time, my family is dedicating a lot of time to being on the lake and warm days means warmer water sooner. For those curious, an above normal March (high temps) has historically been followed by a more mild summer. This would be a welcome change compared to last summer here in Oklahoma. Here’s an image NWSOUN has put together for tomorrow’s heat.
Crazy Friday and Saturday ahead! Here is a map from the NWS in Norman regarding today:
And here is the High Risk area for tomorrow’s suspected outbreak:
I posted a little blurb on my Facebook a few minutes ago. Goes a little something like this:
Alright my non meteorological friends, here’s the scoop based on this morning’s models:
-Today’s activity will be in the extreme SW portion of OK to start. After dark, coverage will increase with a line moving moving though the central part of the state overnight.
-Saturday’s High Risk is off the scale on a few of the indexes. Cells will likely pop just before sunset but the big-time components that will make this a high-end event shouldn’t arrive until after dark for Central and N Central OK. This will be a dangerous event! Cells should form on the I35 corridor and move ENE. Tulsa area will be treated to an overnight severe risk; should be dry during the day Sat.
Sunday looks like an extreme SE OK, AR, TX & MO risk. Too far out to be all that accurate.
As I sit here watching a severe warned cell that’s dropping 2″ hail near Woodward, I look at the extended forecast; as in the forecast well beyond DAY3. Since many of my readers do not look at weather models, I’ll post the following:
This map clearly shows the potential in the latter part of this week. Thursday is a key severe weather day, as is Saturday. Make sure you keep an eye to the sky!
I’ve been blogging for several years now pretty regularly. With advances in portability of the blog, I’ve found myself writing material from my iPad and even my iPhone while away from my office computer. Enjoying the third-party apps with which to write content, upload pictures and format articles, I have even adopted one called BlogJet for the PC.
BlogJet for PC is $40 but so far, totally worth the money. I find it easier to move photos in and out, MUCH easier to format text and actually make it look the way I want within my blog, and for some odd reason, I’m more inclined to write outside of being in the backend of my WP blog in a browser. Here’s a look at the interface:
I also use Blogsy for iPad. You can search my blog here for more info about that app. Suffice it to say, it’s very, very nice for mobile blogging.
As some of you know, my site was hacked in late February. Thanks to Ben Holcomb, I’m back up and running with a new template and more advanced capabilities. Hold tight while I figure them all out! I’ll be back to writing regularly again so check back often.
During the April 3rd severe weather outbreak in the DFW area I was creating maps left and right for posting on WDT social media assets. This is one of the maps I built using iMapPro, a radar utilized in the corporate world for asset protection. The algorithm looks at the current cell as well as the atmosphere ahead of the cell and calculates the potential for a tornado and even its intensity should one be occurring. Pretty sweet technology indeed.
It’ll appear the latest version of WordPress has completely hosed my ability to use the editor. I can write in HTML mode and that’s it. No visual, no pics, no ability to publish with Blogsy for iPad… Nothing.
Searching for a solution now. Wish me luck.
We received 3″ of snow last night during the overnight hours and more is expected tomorrow. I feel only slightly bad for the folks who had to leave today due to it being the end of the holiday weekend. Some fresh powder will be in place for winter sport fun this week! I look forward to little to no lift lines.
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