Creating a Heavy Rain Alert with RainDrop and Val Town

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One of the "joys" of living in Louisiana is the rainy season, which is heavier in spring but honestly, feels like it lasts all year long. I can still remember being on a business trip in 2016, about to fly home, and hearing about some sort of ‘rain event’ back in Louisiana. This surprised me as there wasn’t a hurricane involved, just an incredible amount of rain (up to 2-3 inches per hour). You can read more about it on the Wikipedia page about the event, but it goes without saying – rain is a big deal down here. A while back I discovered RainDrop, which is an app and a web site that lets you check on rainfall totals. You can see my zipcode here, https://www.raindrop.farm/rainfall-totals/zipcode/70508#map,... more →
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Sending an Alert for Short Wait Time at Disney

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Yesterday I had some fun with a web app that made use of APIs to report on rides with the shortest wait times at amusement parks. This was done via the excellent, and free, Queue Times service. The application I built let you select a park, and then rides were displayed sorted by the shortest wait time. While working with the API, I also had another idea for a useful service – notifications for short wait times. Imagine you’re at Disney, or any amusement park, and while you’re there, you would like to be notified when rides have a short wait time. How could you automate this? For now, let’s skip the ‘hard part’ of imagining the service that would let you sign... more →
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