This is not a serious or earthshattering post, but it’s something I’ve noticed and think it’s funny.
I use a little program called Weatherbug, which is a handy way to get local weather info, and remote weather should you desire. It has several tabs, like ‘radar’, ‘photos’, ‘traffic’, but the one I have noticed is the one that’s first, ‘camera’.
‘Camera’ is a live camera, probably selected to be the one nearest my zip code, and the same one comes up every time, from J. L. Boren Elementary School, Mansfield, TX. Why they want to keep an eye on their dumpsters, and broadcast that to the world, is beyond me. I do check in on them, from time to time, to see if they’ve moved. So far, well, they’re dumpsters.
The wonders of the internet.
LOL! It is indeed the nearest camera attached to a weatherbug station and I’m sorry you have to look at the dumpsters. My nearest camera is pointed at the veteran’s memorial in my home town about 20 miles down the road. And there’s one I can change it too that points at the front of my mom’s high school, if I’m waxing nostalgic…
Watching the dumpsters:
It reminds of of a personal web site in Britain by a very talented computer artist and programmer. He took photos from his rooftop of the surrounding countryside with the pasteurs, cows, sheep, barns, rooftops, etc in differing weather conditions, converted them all to computerized art, and now displays the appproapriate piece with regard to temp, cloudds, rain/snow, day, night, moon, sun with a weather feed he gets from somewhere.
How does that remind me of dumpsters? The cows in his images move around the field in response to the weather. The dumpsters… well, maybe they’ll just sit there.
don’t worry- I just sent our NetOps team an email with a link to your blog- they’ll contact the school and kindly ask them to change to a “better” view- so hurry up and enjoy the view while it lasts. hopefully if the staff isn’t on vacation this week due to school break we can get it changed quickly.
thanks and feel free to email me at jay@weatherbug.com with any other “interesting’ camera views-LOL
Jay Hoffman, Manager, WeatherBug customer support team
okay, don’t laugh- we contacted our station contact at the school and told him that while it’s a lovely dumpster- the goal is really to aim the camera towards the sky in the direction where most storms approach from. He told us that in addition to the view of the track and dumpster= there must be a Coke machine in that area and he feels the camera keeps the kids from messing around with the coke machine.
oh well- not sure that we’ll be able to convince him to switch this. Maybe a critical blog campaign is needed- or a petition drive- LOL.
oh well, we gave it a shot.
looks like you’ll be able to enjoy more dumpster viewing….
Jay Hoffman, WeatherBug customer support manager