As you may know, we moved to Reading (Berks) one month ago. Before that we where living in Exeter (Devon), and moving implies a lot of difficulties: you’re in different city, and you don’t know where’s anything (from shops to pubs, including all the city services) .
But there’s one thing you never expect: the weather applet in your system doesn’t support your new city (tragic music cue).
I checked about current status of the weather applet in Gnome, and I found an interesting proposal dated two years ago, but nothing that shows progress.
I suffered this exact frustration some time ago when I was living in my home town, and now, after years living in different supported cities… does it mean my luck is over? Not necessarily: I know Python and I’m prepared to use it!
So after a couple of weeks hacking form time to time (whenever I had free time, not that much lately), Oraje Applet was born.
Details dialog, Oraje Applet 0.1
I did some research and found that Yahoo! Weather has information about Reading (my current location), and there’s an API for it.
It’s not the best API ever (in fact, there’s no easy way to find a location without knowing the associated code, called WOEID), and sometimes the updates lag behind reality (AKA it’s raining and your applet says it isn’t), but overall it’s what I was looking for.
In the project page there’s a tarball with the first released version (0.1), and there’s a lot of work to do, but I think it’s kind of usable if you want to give it a try.
I’d like to package it for Fedora, but I didn’t have the time yet (any volunteer for that would be welcome!).
Update: you can find a WOEID using the Yahoo! GeoPlanet™ API. I need to check it deeply, because at first sight there are a couple of things I don’t like very much.
