Tracking climate predictions

[catfishkhan]

Kevin was gracious enough to allow me to advertise www.ExpertClimatePredictions.com on here, so here is my quick summary.

I started to develop this site in JAVA (hosted on my home computer) several months ago at a time when I didn't have any decent work to do at my job in order to keep up my web development skills and to pursue my interest in the climate change debate. I'm hoping some of you can take a look at it and let me know if it is worthwhile for me to spend more time on it.

Here is basically what I'm looking for:

1) Comment on and vote whether existing uploaded predictions are accurate.
2) Upload additional predictions.
3) Use the contact site link or the "website suggestions" message board to send me any problems with the site or any ideas for future functionality.

Thanks for your time,
Dave Vermette

[N9AAT]

Nice site. Fun. The only problem is nobody has to log in. The cretans with their grudges will descend upon ye in time and all will be vanity of vanities. Of course it's always a good chance to learn new things about profanity.

Or maybe not. Good luck.

[catfishkhan]

Feb 19, 2010 20:36:20 GMT N9AAT said:

Nice site. Fun. The only problem is nobody has to log in. The cretans with their grudges will descend upon ye in time and all will be vanity of vanities. Of course it's always a good chance to learn new things about profanity.

Or maybe not. Good luck.

I actually had a ton of spammers hitting my site multiple times a day before I advertised it here, but I was able to keep them at bay with surprisingly just a few lines of code... we'll see if it lasts. Writing this code from scratch instead of using well known message board software leaves me somewhat out in the jungle, but gives me the freedom to do whatever I want with it in the future. I've also had plenty of Russian/Chinese hackers show up (I log all the ip hits in my database).

As far as cretans and profanities go, so far the few posters have all been civil. I can add SSL and logins later if my site becomes popular (I already bought a certificate from godaddy but am not yet using it). I hope to make a topical comment on WattsUpWithThat if I see a new interesting prediction pop up there. I'm trying to ethically make my site more popular -- advertise, but without being a pest about it. I sent emails to RealClimate, DailyTech, and slashdot but with no responses.

I haven't upgraded the site at all lately as I've been busy with personal issues, but I think the next thing I'm going to do is change the upload prediction page to allow people to just send me a url to a prediction -- I think most people visit sites like these for 1)entertainment and 2)information so expecting people to make the effort to do a writeup on a prediction is just too much. Until I do that, I guess people can use the "contact site" link to send me urls of important predictions I am missing on my site. Later, when I add SSL and logins I would like to make it so visitors can make their own monthly and yearly temperature predictions so they can see how their skills measure up against others. I also want to automatically download and graph the latest monthly temperatures so I can always be the first with the new graphs.

I got mad at Verizon so I switched it from my FIOS static IP to a dynamic one with COMCAST. So far it is holding up with comcast, but I will probably switch it back since Verizon is playing nicer now after I filed my better business bureau complaint.