Quip.net - David Stiller Résumé

Graphical METAR

Skills

ActionScript, regular expressions, web services, Macromedia Flash

Summary

One of the members-only features of Airtraveler.com, Graphical METAR connects to an in-house web service to retrieve and interpret Meteorological Aviation Report (METAR) data — weather information for pilots — to provide a user-friendly visual representation. The compass rose shows wind direction and speed, the thermometer shows temperature, icons illustrate various conditions, and the app’s background supplies a quick overview, like looking out a window.

The METAR standard is extremely complicated to the uninitiated. For example, the following string — KORF 250151Z 22009KT 10SM OVC080 00/M12 A2995 RMK AO2 SLP143 T00001117 — actually contains meaningful information! Drawing this information out was quite an effort.

In addition to the Flash work, I wrote the regular expression patterns to accomplish this goal, which I passed along to the .NET web services programmer. These were easily my most sophisticated regular expressions to date.