Whether it’s nice someplace else
With the rest of the family out of the house for the evening, it was time to try something new. We don’t have a home theatre, which is why the Happy Gang went to the local cinema. I, on the other hand, have a radio which tunes in CBC and the Randy Bachman show. Guess who gets more value for their dollar?
Anyhow, this was an obvious time to run upgrades on that great unfinished symphony known as Asterisk (or TrixBox) that has a special place in the basement and a regular internet presence. The good folks at the Nerdvittles site are always presenting neat possibilities, so off to catch up on the latest and greatest in cheap VOIP.
Tonight’s project required a few minutes in front of the configuration editor and as easy as pie, I now have the weather forecast spoken for me for any zip code in the US of A. Now I can find out whether it’s nice someplace else without tuning in the weather channel or doing a Google search. The voice is a touch geeky; it goes with the price bracket. Useful as…
Now the only shortcoming is that I live in Canada. Not the US of A. I could extrapolate possible climate conditions from this new service (or I could open the front door and look outside, but then the dog might escape and I would have to find two stale donuts and my shoes and public pants and go outside after said dog). Instead, I checked to see if there was a solution that fitted more with my evening’s project.
Turns out that there used to be one, until Environment Canada revamped their website last summer. Now the required forecast files are someplace else. If I can find them I can edit the script file and have a home PBX that actually provides a service. Maybe tomorrow.
