Weather Bonk

So I want to drive from Seattle to NYC. No really I want to do that once. Coast to coast.
Well I'll leave that dream to come true in another blog. It's a different topic I wanna talk about right now.

So I wanna start at 6 PM from Seattle, let Google Maps (or some other maps) decide the way for me, AND, AND tell me hows the weather gonna be all the along the way.

Now look at this rad site: http://weatherbonk.com/weather/routeWeather.jsp?
Start from Seattle, at 6 PM today, and reach NYC in 3 days. And it tells me how the weather's gonna be along the way. Isn't that cool?

And there are loads of other options! Cool. Now check out their home page: http://weatherbonk.com
I know all this is there in weather.com too but, this is like, presenting all the relevant data in the relevant manner!

Burma Shave Slogans

Don't stick
Your elbow
Out so far
It might go home
In another car.

This is a Burma Shave Slogan. So it this:

Passing cars,
When you can't see,
May get you,
A glimpse,
Of eternity.

I was reading Head First HTML and CSS - I really like the presentation style of Head First books. It's fun and their way really works (with me at the least).

And I came across these interesting things called Burma Shave Signs. Very interesting...

Burma Shave was a company that made brushless shaving cream in the 1920s and 30s. They used to advertise their products with roadside signs and that turned out to be very popular. There would be a group of 4-6 signs one after the other on the roadside, each with just one line from a slogan. The last sign would almost always be the name of their product, Burma Shave.

At one point, they had 7,000 of these signs on the roads throughout the US. Now most are gone, but the book says there are still a few left. Maybe I can see one before I leave the US...

Now, I had seen these kinda signs in ads on TV, in skits in school etc. But never knew that they originated from this Burma Shave cream! :-)

It's funny right? And to read this stuff in a technical book is even more fun (the book even explains in a note what these signs are)

Anyway, do explore more. They have funny ones there:

Wikipedia on Burma Shave: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burma-Shave
Another page that shows how it looks like: http://www.fiftiesweb.com/burma.htm

Got API

I used the Sun Java API Docs online when I used to code in Java: http://java.sun.com/javase/6/docs/api/

And the for Ruby, Ruby Brain is a nice place - http://www.rubybrain.com/ and http://www.railsbrain.com/

Even for DB, the MySQL API docs are good: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/index.html

But today I was introduced to Got API!
You get most of the stuff you are looking for, all in one place. They have CSS/XML/Javascript, even the famous AJAX libraries, C++, Java, Ruby/Rails... you name it! And a nice interface too.

Check it out: http://www.gotapi.com