I've deployed a test app for downloading NASA's Spot The Station sightings as an ICS calendar.
There's no fancy front end yet, just a URL Scheme that follows:
/place/Country/Region/City or /place/Country/City
e.g.
Sometimes a region is needed, other times not. For now, just use the NASA App to find the correct name hierarchy for your city.
Note: I threw this together quickly. It works, and well enough to share, but it's still at a very early stage.
The Ruminant does the work for you, sending you news from a selection of sources around the world. You don't have to do anything.
It's very easy to search or filter by typing in the box. It's instant actually, and if you want to keep it, just hit enter and the term will be added to a tag list. You can stack filter tags on top of each other.
As an extra, place a dash (-) at the beginning of the term and you can choose what not to see.
Click any filter tags to remove them and it's like they were never there. Magic.
I personally find myself using it with a few tabs open, each one with a different set of filters. Other times, I just filter as I go.
This is a work in progress. I'm still experiementing with the feed selection and trying to strike a balance. How much is too much, or how little is not enough.
Feedback is most welcome!
(hint: click the cow)
A simple news feed aggregator I've been working on. I'm still polishing up the interface but it's quite useable, at least locally.
Set your own RSS feeds in the config file, load it up and wait for something interesting to come in. Once running you can filter the feed using the input on the right, creating tags as you go.
Technically, it's a Node.js backend that will periodically refresh from an array of urls in a json file. These are then rendered in the client using Facebook's React framework.
All communication happens via Socket.io, and for a bit of fun the number of other readers is broadcast.
See the code and try it for yourself.
All programmers are tempted to roll their own writing platform at some point. This website is my turn.
In terms of sophistication, it sits somewhere between WordPress and a pencil. The app will read Markdown files from a folder called 'posts',
and then spit out an index page. Posts are ordered by date. No special syntax, it simply uses util.format() for placement in a template file.
Give me a little while and I'll see the light and switch over to Jekyll or some such. But until then I'll have some fun.
I'm happy with that, and I'll add to it as I see fit.
NASA has built a great website to see a listing of ISS sightings by city. It comes in tabular form with an accessible RSS feed. For example, here is the listing for Berlin, Germany.
Useful, but what I needed was a calender instantly accessible from my phone.
You can use the two below projects to create such an .ics file and host it somewhere, such as your public Dropbox folder. Then subscribe to that location using your calendar app.
I personally use Apple's Calendar apps on Mac OS X and iOS to test this. Google Calendar doesn't complain though. Your mileage may vary.
It's only 'developer friendly' right now, and a work in progress. It wouldn't take much work to create a user friendly front end.
