Old Weather Forum

July is complete.

March is complete too. Nothing special.
On to April.

April done and uploaded. There was some travel around Puget Sound - with a huge number of locations and course changes mentioned!

Hopefully that will keep Michael out of mischief

May done. They were in Seattle and did nothing.
Just one month left for me!

Got some tricky place names while going to Alaska the inside way *groan*:

On this page, second-to-last line, the first place looks like "Susan Rock Lighthouse":
https://catalog.archives.gov/OpaAPI/med ... 6_0099.JPG

And on this one, second line from the top, it looks like "Asher/Ashen Point Light":
https://catalog.archives.gov/OpaAPI/med ... 6_0101.JPG

In each case, I could not work out if this is correct or if it should be something else, even after looking at the Reference List and at maps.

On this page, second-to-last line, the first place looks like "Susan Rock Lighthouse":
https://catalog.archives.gov/OpaAPI/med ... 6_0099.JPG

There is a Susan Rock at about the right location.
https://www.geonames.org/6159955/susan-rock.html

And on this one, second line from the top, it looks like "Asher/Ashen Point Light":
https://catalog.archives.gov/OpaAPI/med ... 6_0101.JPG

Asher Point appears to be at about the right location for this one.
https://www.geonames.org/5887549/asher-point.html

You're correct and you get 100 points for reading scrawl:

Susan Rock 52.283333, -128.5 http://www4.rncan.gc.ca/search-place-names/unique/JCCRX

Asher Point 53.0875 -128.556667 http://www4.rncan.gc.ca/search-place-names/unique/JCLYM

I'll send these along to Matteo. I've been collecting a few with the Burton Island 1955 Jul-Dec deck logs.

I've found the best way to find these sorts of places, and I don't suggest you bother unless you want the programming challenge, is to download the data from the Canadian Natural Resources official place names database. I do it by province, and I remove places that are far from the coast. Then I use a script that pulls out places near a given point. It also generates a KML file so I can see each point on a map. I can click on one of the icons and see the details, such as name, location and ID. I do the same with Geonames, dumping place name data for states or countries. The setting up required a bit of work, but the searches are very very fast. The handy thing is that I can search for parts of a name, or something like point or rock, etc with kml_search which reads the KML file. If the region is a province, my geonames script reads the official Canadian data for the given province, otherwise it searches the Geonames data for the selected state or country. There are so many names, I think I have over 14,000,000 from Geonames, that the searches are much faster if the data are separated into smaller chunks.

I can look in the database for a given string. If one letter is capitalized, I search the big database for the province, state or country, otherwise I search Matteo's database. IF they draw a blank, I use the near or geonames scripts.
Or I can look for all the places near a point, in this case near Redcliff Point, which is mentioned in the log.
Usually I just use the script near that checks Matteo's database. And, if that pulls up nothing, I use the geonames script.

I usually just look for other points earlier or later in the log that I can find on a map and then use the navigation entries to get a rough idea of where to look for something similar to what the log keeper scrawled.

With the great resource that Matteo is maintaining, there aren't all that many that are a challenge. So it's not worth all the trouble to me that you're putting in. However, with all the work you do plotting the data, I can see where it was worth the effort for you.

This entry was logged on August 17:

1415 Boat #6 to Cape Spencer to survey new site for Cape Spencer Light.

https://catalog.archives.gov/OpaAPI/med ... 7_0079.JPG

So the Cape Spencer Light may be in a different location on current maps than it was back then. However, for our purposes it's probably not significant.

Wikipedia makes no mention of a move. We could check locations on charts before and after 1951, but I suspect it's in much the same place.

ggordon wrote: ↑Sun Oct 18, 2020 8:49 pm I usually just look for other points earlier or later in the log that I can find on a map and then use the navigation entries to get a rough idea of where to look for something similar to what the log keeper scrawled.

With the great resource that Matteo is maintaining, there aren't all that many that are a challenge. So it's not worth all the trouble to me that you're putting in. However, with all the work you do plotting the data, I can see where it was worth the effort for you.

That's how I started, way back when the USS Concord was patrolling the waters in the Far East. Then I wrote a small script to calculate where they were from a known point using their course and distance travelled. And the scripts became bigger, more numerous and much more sophisticated until it got me where I am today. Ah, the life of a transcriber is so much simpler.

Unless you're doing what I am, there's really no point doing what I did. But, I know that Chris enjoys a programming challenge.