I've used a multitude of programming languages to develop this site. There's some JavaScript here, some plain 'ol HTML, and my personal favorite, PERL. PERL can do some interesting things, but it can be a little less than forgiving sometimes. The scripts are written in plain text, and I use just a plain 'ol text editor to write them. In the past, much of the data was saved in text files for the scripts to use, but since then I have moved them into MySQL databases.

I like using MySQL simply because to manipulate the data in a pinch, all I need is MS Access, or just use the tools that are on MySQL's website. The text files I used to use in the past made it somewhat difficult to find errors and fix them.

As you can see, there is some weather stuff here too. I've been adding these pages and adding different things to the pages as I go. I get all my images and information from the National Weather Service and parse it the way I like to see it. The images, Hazardous Weather Outlook, Alerts, and Forecasts are checked every minute to make sure that it is current. If something has changed, it is updated here. I do not reference images from other websites. They all are stored on this server. I like it that way since it means that I don't have to worry if another site is slow today, I only have to worry if my internet connection is healthy. The images are in some cases manipulated using ImageMagick.

I've become a Google Maps junkie. There's a few maps in here if you poke around long enough.  If you're an amateur radio operator, search for someone's call sign from the bar on the left and it will allow you to click on the address (if it's not a PO box) which will take you to a Google Map.  There's also a map of all the lighthouses we've been to.

In the course of writing the Google Maps stuff, I've learned more about Javascript and have learned to loathe it.  I don't like the fact that it's an asynchronous language.  I've been bitten by that one more than one time and I think that it actually makes it slower.  You have to add more code to keep checking if a loop really is done and you could end up creating more processes than you need to, which takes up more memory.  It's also been prone to memory leaks.

I plan on adding more things to this site as time goes on, although they are slow coming in the summer months. Sometimes outdoor projects take priority over programming, and that's not altogether a bad thing. We also like to camp (that's in a tent, the real way to camp).  When we go camping, one of our favorite sites to see are lighthouses.

Thanks for stopping by, and I hope you enjoy some of the hard work I put into this site.